Carrier route record
OOORD→CMH
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Columbus
- Flights
- 535
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to CMH sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 535 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,507 at 76.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.6% on time across 1,507 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 508 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on ORD to CMH, 4,843 flights
These figures cover 535 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 CMH
SkyWest flew 535 of the 4,843 flights on ORD to CMH, about 11% of it. Its 68.3% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.6% to American at 61.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,507 | 76.6% | 79 min | 3.19% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,407 | 74.0% | 71 min | 2.06% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,213 | 71.4% | 70 min | 1.48% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 535 | 68.3% | 80 min | 4.86% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 67.3% | 77 min | 3.70% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 61.6% | 86 min | 1.57% | D |
Republic Airways cancels 3.2% 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 45 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am89 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am79 flights75.6%
- 11am–2pm252 flights69.0%
- 2pm–5pm47 flights61.5%
- 5pm–8pm68 flights38.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 38.7% on time, against 83.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 252 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to CMH through the year
December is the weak month at 48.7% on time, against 83.9% in November. 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 85 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 53.4%. 21 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Extreme weather
- 16%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,833 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 4,783 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.86%, 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. 13.8% 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 296 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.5% on time across 535 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 535 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 CMH
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 508 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CMH, every carrier
- SkyWest on CMH to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CMH76.6%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CMH74.0%
- United Airlines on ORD to CMH71.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to CMH61.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.