Carrier route record

OOORD→COS

SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Colorado Springs

Flights: 822
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 82%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on ORD to COS draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 822 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to COS runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 798 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.31%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.7%

Every carrier on ORD to COS, 1,001 flights

These figures cover 822 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 COS

SkyWest flew 822 of the 1,001 flights on ORD to COS, most of the route. Its 66.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.6% to SkyWest at 66.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to COS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	179	82.6%	58 min	0.56%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	822	66.8%	73 min	2.31%	C

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on ORD to COS

OO 647609:5063.1% · 279 flights

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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am571 flights69.4%
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm3 flights—
5pm–8pm125 flights55.5%
8pm–5am122 flights64.7%

Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.5% on time, against 69.4% for the 8am–11am 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 571 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORD to COS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 42.6% on time, 42 points below September, the best at 84.7%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 57.9%. 13 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 19,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,333 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 7,347 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.31% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.61%.

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. 12.4% 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.

The 911 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 73.3% on time across 821 flights, 7 points above 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. 822 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 COS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 822 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 66.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 798 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