Carrier route record
OOORD→CLE
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Cleveland
- Flights
- 853
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to CLE carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 853 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 583 at 76.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.2% on time across 583 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 822 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.8%
Every carrier on ORD to CLE, 4,893 flights
These figures cover 853 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to CLE
SkyWest flew 853 of the 4,893 flights on ORD to CLE, about 17% of it. Its 67.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.2% to American at 59.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 59.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 396 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 583 | 76.2% | 69 min | 5.32% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 879 | 73.1% | 62 min | 4.10% | C− |
| United Airlines | 2,182 | 71.8% | 78 min | 1.28% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 853 | 67.3% | 87 min | 3.40% | C− |
| American Airlines | 396 | 59.2% | 98 min | 3.54% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.3% 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.
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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 21 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am194 flights74.7%
- 8am–11am104 flights64.7%
- 11am–2pm204 flights70.6%
- 2pm–5pm256 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm27 flights—
- 8pm–5am68 flights53.8%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.8% on time, against 74.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 256 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to CLE through the year
December is the weak month at 38.4% on time, against 85.1% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 57.9%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on ORD to CLE runs when it is late
The 269 late arrivals split 77 under half an hour, 67 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 125 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early188 flights22.9%
- Within 15 min365 flights44.4%
- 15–29 min late77 flights9.4%
- 30–59 min late67 flights8.2%
- 1–2 hours late69 flights8.4%
- 2+ hours late56 flights6.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 822 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
31 of 245 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 55 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at CLE.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on ORD to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 June 2026, 16 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as extreme weather.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 June 2026 | 16 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 June 2026 | 14 hours 37 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 14 December 2025 | 11 hours 37 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 20 January 2026 | 11 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 August 2026 | 6 hours 37 minutes | Extreme weather |
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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 25%Extreme weather
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 25% 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 4.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,433 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,418 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.40%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
15.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 316 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 69.2% on time across 854 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. 853 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 CLE
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.40% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 822 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CLE, every carrier
- SkyWest on CLE to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CLE76.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CLE73.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to CLE71.8%
- American Airlines on ORD to CLE59.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.