Carrier route record

OOORD→DAY

SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Dayton

Flights: 469
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 27%
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 DAY draws a D−. Roughly 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 469 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to DAY runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 169 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 440 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.18%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

65.3%

Every carrier on ORD to DAY, 1,744 flights

These figures cover 469 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.0% 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 DAY

SkyWest flew 469 of the 1,744 flights on ORD to DAY, about 27% of it. Its 60.7% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.9% to PSA at 60.2%. Three 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 DAY
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	69	80.9%	80 min	1.45%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	357	76.9%	65 min	3.08%	B−
Republic Airwaysthin sample	103	70.8%	60 min	6.80%	C−
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	469	60.7%	82 min	6.18%	D−
PSA Airlines	746	60.2%	166 min	5.36%	D−

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 13 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–11am93 flights69.3%
11am–2pm100 flights57.6%
2pm–5pm196 flights58.9%
5pm–8pm65 flights56.7%
8pm–5am15 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.7% on time, against 69.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 196 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORD to DAY through the year

Jul–Sep 202534 flights74.2%
Oct–Dec 2025119 flights57.9%
Jan–Mar 2026125 flights55.6%
Apr–Jun 2026191 flights63.2%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 60.7% on time across 469 flights.

SkyWest on ORD to DAY did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 55.6%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 117 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 45.5%. 26 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
16%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,099 reported delay minutes.

36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.

Cancellations run at 6.18%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 18.0% 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 240 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 60.5% on time across 470 flights, within half a point 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. 469 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 DAY

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.18% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 440 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