Carrier route record
OOORD→COU
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Columbia
- Flights
- 903
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 44%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to COU carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% 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 903 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on ORD to COU runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 106 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 852 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.8%
Every carrier on ORD to COU, 2,054 flights
These figures cover 903 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to COU
SkyWest flew 903 of the 2,054 flights on ORD to COU, about 44% of it. Its 66.7% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 73.9% to SkyWest at 66.7%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,151 | 73.9% | 69 min | 2.69% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 903 | 66.7% | 103 min | 5.09% | C− |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on ORD to COU
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am189 flights68.6%
- 11am–2pm320 flights72.6%
- 2pm–5pm40 flights54.3%
- 5pm–8pm102 flights54.7%
- 8pm–5am249 flights63.8%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 72.6% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 54.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 320 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to COU through the year
December is the weak month at 45.3% on time, against 79.8% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 73.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 62.6%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on ORD to COU runs when it is late
SkyWest on ORD to COU often beats the schedule: 243 of 852 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 284 late arrivals split 62 under half an hour, 93 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 129 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early243 flights28.5%
- Within 15 min325 flights38.1%
- 15–29 min late62 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late93 flights10.9%
- 1–2 hours late67 flights7.9%
- 2+ hours late62 flights7.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 852 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 260 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 28 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 52 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 COU.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on ORD to COU
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 August 2026, 17 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 August 2026 | 17 hours 55 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 29 December 2025 | 16 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 April 2026 | 15 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 June 2026 | 12 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 October 2025 | 11 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 29,301 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,977 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.09%, against 1.89% 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
15.1% 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 315 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 69.6% on time across 902 flights, within 3 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. 903 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 COU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.09% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 852 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.