Carrier route record

OOORD→BDL

SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Hartford

Flights: 263
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
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 BDL lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 263 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 644 at 80.5% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.5% on time across 644 flights.

On time

77.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 257 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.28%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.4%

Every carrier on ORD to BDL, 2,350 flights

These figures cover 263 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 ORD to BDL

SkyWest flew 263 of the 2,350 flights on ORD to BDL, about 11% of it. Its 77.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.9% to American at 67.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 461 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to BDL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	141	84.9%	45 min	1.42%	B
Republic Airways	644	80.5%	79 min	3.42%	B−
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	263	77.4%	73 min	2.28%	B
United Airlines	841	73.6%	65 min	1.31%	C
American Airlines	461	67.6%	90 min	3.25%	C−

Republic Airways 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 263 flights.

5am–8am55 flights79.6%
8am–11am24 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm184 flights75.4%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 79.6% on time for the 5am–8am window against 75.4% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 184 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORD to BDL through the year

Jul–Sep 202588 flights77.3%
Oct–Dec 202548 flights84.4%
Jan–Mar 202620 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026107 flights75.2%

Scale runs 65% 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 77.4% on time across 263 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on ORD to BDL held fairly steady: 77.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 84.4% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 75.2% 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.4%. 17 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. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,250 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.

Carrier
45%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
18%
Late-arriving aircraft
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,250 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,929 of the 4,250 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.28% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 783 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 70.6% on time across 262 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 263 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 BDL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 263 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 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 257 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