Carrier route record
OOORD→ELP
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to El Paso
- Flights
- 258
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 36%
- 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 ELP sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 258 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 ELP runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 247 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.9%
Every carrier on ORD to ELP, 723 flights
These figures cover 258 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 ELP
SkyWest flew 258 of the 723 flights on ORD to ELP, about 36% of it. Its 69.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 87.2% to United at 0.0%. Four 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 126 | 87.2% | 75 min | 0.79% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 292 | 70.8% | 62 min | 1.03% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 258 | 69.2% | 84 min | 3.49% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 37.2% | 60 min | 4.44% | F− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 36 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 258 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am19 flights—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm54 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am165 flights66.9%
Scale runs 60% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 66.9% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to ELP through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025107 flights68.6%
- Oct–Dec 202588 flights67.1%
- Jan–Mar 20263 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202660 flights75.4%
Scale runs 60% 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 69.2% on time across 258 flights.
Quarter by quarter SkyWest on ORD to ELP held fairly steady: 68.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 67.1% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 75.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.1%. 16 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 6,369 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 19%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,369 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 6,369 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 3.49%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 10.5% 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 1,236 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 76.0% on time across 262 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. 258 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 ELP
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.49% 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. 247 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to ELP, every carrier
- SkyWest on ELP to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to ELP87.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to ELP70.8%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.