Carrier route record

OOORD→ABQ

SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Albuquerque

Flights: 108
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 5

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

SkyWest on ORD to ABQ draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 108 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to ABQ runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 193 extra late arrivals.

On time

58.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 103 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.63%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.8%

Every carrier on ORD to ABQ, 1,178 flights

These figures cover 108 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.3% 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 ORD to ABQ

SkyWest flew 108 of the 1,178 flights on ORD to ABQ, about 9% of it. Its 58.3% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 78.3% to SkyWest at 58.3%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to ABQ
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	60	78.3%	79 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	392	75.3%	60 min	0.77%	B+
Envoy Airthin sample	320	71.5%	71 min	1.25%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	298	67.0%	63 min	1.01%	C
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	108	58.3%	80 min	4.63%	D−

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

5am–8am—
8am–11am41 flights68.3%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm67 flights51.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.6% on time, against 68.3% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 67 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORD to ABQ through the year

Jul–Sep 202544 flights48.8%
Oct–Dec 202530 flights60.0%
Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
Apr–Jun 20266 flights—

Scale runs 40% to 65%. 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 58.3% on time across 108 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on ORD to ABQ logged 44 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 30 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 28 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 6 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 58.3% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 3,439 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
54%
National Airspace System
21%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
7%

54% 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 3,439 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 3,439 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 68.3% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.63%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 22.3% 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.

The 1,118 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 72.6% on time across 109 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 108 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 ORD to ABQ

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.63% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 103 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