Carrier route record
OOMSY→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · New Orleans to Chicago
- Flights
- 131
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on MSY to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 131 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 842 at 82.3% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.3% on time across 842 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 129 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.1%
Every carrier on MSY to ORD, 2,400 flights
These figures cover 131 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on MSY to ORD
SkyWest flew 131 of the 2,400 flights on MSY to ORD, about 5% of it. Its 72.9% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.3% to Frontier at 63.6%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 82.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 400 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 842 | 82.3% | 79 min | 1.19% | B |
| Envoy Air | 465 | 82.1% | 68 min | 1.72% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 336 | 78.0% | 73 min | 2.68% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 131 | 72.9% | 61 min | 1.53% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 215 | 70.5% | 67 min | 6.51% | C− |
| American Airlines | 400 | 70.3% | 137 min | 2.25% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 63.6% | 67 min | 0.00% | D+ |
The spread between United and American is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am65 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm65 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 80.0% of the time, against 66.7% for the evening window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 65 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on MSY to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202535 flights82.9%
- Oct–Dec 202524 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202612 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202660 flights69.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.9% on time across 131 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on MSY to ORD logged 35 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 24 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 12 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 60 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 72.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,123 reported delay minutes.
- 31%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 23%Extreme weather
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 23% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,123 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 837 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.1% on time across 131 flights, 6 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 131 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on MSY to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 131 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 129 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to MSY, the return leg
- United Airlines on MSY to ORD82.3%
- Envoy Air on MSY to ORD82.1%
- Republic Airways on MSY to ORD78.0%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to ORD70.5%
- American Airlines on MSY to ORD70.3%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.