Carrier route record
OOORD→CVG
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 896
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- 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 CVG carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.4% 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 D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 896 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,368 at 79.3% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.3% on time across 1,368 flights.
Key figures
On time
63.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 847 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on ORD to CVG, 4,647 flights
These figures cover 896 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% 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 CVG
SkyWest flew 896 of the 4,647 flights on ORD to CVG, about 19% of it. Its 63.4% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 79.3% to American at 58.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 79.3% of the time; Envoy Air manages 71.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,333 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,368 | 79.3% | 66 min | 3.36% | B− |
| United Airlines | 945 | 72.4% | 69 min | 1.69% | C |
| Envoy Air | 1,333 | 71.4% | 71 min | 2.40% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 68.6% | 125 min | 5.41% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 896 | 63.4% | 89 min | 5.36% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 58.2% | 89 min | 1.47% | D |
Republic Airways cancels 3.4% 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 24 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am7 flights—
- 8am–11am114 flights67.3%
- 11am–2pm409 flights64.6%
- 2pm–5pm234 flights57.6%
- 5pm–8pm56 flights52.9%
- 8pm–5am76 flights77.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.9% on time, against 77.1% for the 8pm–5am 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 409 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to CVG through the year
December is the weak month at 51.7% on time, against 76.8% in October. 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.8%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 50%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 27,690 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 14,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.36%, 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. 16.6% 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 264 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 58.6% on time across 895 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 896 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 CVG
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.36% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 847 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CVG, every carrier
- SkyWest on CVG to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CVG79.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to CVG72.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CVG71.4%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.