Carrier route record
OOORD→CLE
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Cleveland
- Flights
- 948
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- 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 CLE carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% 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 C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 948 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 540 at 74.5% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 74.5% on time across 540 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 913 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on ORD to CLE, 4,899 flights
These figures cover 948 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 CLE
SkyWest flew 948 of the 4,899 flights on ORD to CLE, about 19% of it. Its 66.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 74.5% to American at 56.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 74.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 56.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 422 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 540 | 74.5% | 70 min | 5.56% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 814 | 72.7% | 60 min | 4.18% | C− |
| United Airlines | 2,175 | 72.3% | 72 min | 1.29% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 948 | 66.2% | 86 min | 3.48% | C− |
| American Airlines | 422 | 56.4% | 100 min | 4.98% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.6% 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 38 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am149 flights75.7%
- 8am–11am145 flights66.2%
- 11am–2pm241 flights71.8%
- 2pm–5pm269 flights64.1%
- 5pm–8pm54 flights37.7%
- 8pm–5am90 flights57.6%
Scale runs 30% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 37.7% on time, against 75.7% 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 269 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 153 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 54.0%. 24 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 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 30%Extreme weather
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 30% 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 4.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,541 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 11,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.48%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.9% 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 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 68.5% on time across 947 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. 948 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 3.48% 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. 913 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 CLE74.5%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CLE72.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to CLE72.3%
- American Airlines on ORD to CLE56.4%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.