Carrier route record

OOOMA→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Omaha to Chicago

Flights: 384
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on OMA 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 384 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 855 at 75.6% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on OMA to ORD runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 368 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.91%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.5%

Every carrier on OMA to ORD, 3,025 flights

These figures cover 384 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on OMA to ORD

SkyWest flew 384 of the 3,025 flights on OMA to ORD, about 13% of it. Its 71.5% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 76.0% to PSA at 71.4%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on OMA to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	261	76.0%	126 min	2.30%	B
Envoy Air	855	75.6%	69 min	3.39%	B−
United Airlines	1,347	74.6%	92 min	1.71%	C
Republic Airwaysthin sample	170	72.7%	73 min	2.94%	C
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	384	71.5%	80 min	3.91%	C−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	8	71.4%	55 min	12.50%	C−

Envoy Air cancels 3.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 30 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am82 flights87.0%
8am–11am30 flights—
11am–2pm147 flights71.5%
2pm–5pm32 flights56.7%
5pm–8pm92 flights59.8%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.0% of the time, against 56.7% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 147 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on OMA to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025106 flights76.7%
Oct–Dec 2025115 flights67.3%
Jan–Mar 202630 flights70.0%
Apr–Jun 2026133 flights71.2%

Scale runs 60% to 80%. 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 71.5% on time across 384 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on OMA to ORD held fairly steady: 76.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 67.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 70.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 71.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.7%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 8,374 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
National Airspace System
26%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
4%

50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 8,374 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 8,374 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.0% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.91%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 416 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.2% on time across 381 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 384 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 OMA to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 368 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures