Carrier route record
OOORD→CID
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 813
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- 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 CID carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 813 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 964 at 72.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to CID runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 136 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 770 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.8%
Every carrier on ORD to CID, 2,715 flights
These figures cover 813 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.4% 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 CID
SkyWest flew 813 of the 2,715 flights on ORD to CID, about 30% of it. Its 64.0% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 72.4% to American at 60.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 72.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 63.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 456 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 354 | 72.4% | 68 min | 4.80% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 964 | 72.2% | 68 min | 2.49% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 813 | 64.0% | 104 min | 5.17% | D− |
| United Airlines | 456 | 63.4% | 95 min | 1.54% | D |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 60.3% | 75 min | 4.72% | D− |
Envoy leads United by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 25 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am64 flights78.3%
- 8am–11am267 flights70.1%
- 11am–2pm157 flights65.3%
- 2pm–5pm79 flights57.9%
- 5pm–8pm174 flights53.7%
- 8pm–5am72 flights55.7%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.7% on time, against 78.3% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 267 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to CID through the year
July is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 78.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 147 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 69.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,897 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 12,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.17%, 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. 18.4% 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 196 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 runs 65.6% on time across 812 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 813 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 CID
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 770 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CID, every carrier
- SkyWest on CID to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CID72.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CID72.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to CID63.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to CID60.3%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.