Carrier route record
OOORD→FAR
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Fargo
- Flights
- 1,005
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- 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 FAR draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,005 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to FAR runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 150 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 967 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on ORD to FAR, 2,065 flights
These figures cover 1,005 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 FAR
SkyWest flew 1,005 of the 2,065 flights on ORD to FAR, about 49% of it. Its 62.6% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 76.0% to SkyWest at 62.6%.
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 | 1,060 | 76.0% | 62 min | 2.64% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,005 | 62.6% | 85 min | 3.18% | D− |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on ORD to FAR
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 21 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–11am362 flights65.7%
- 11am–2pm210 flights68.2%
- 2pm–5pm207 flights62.5%
- 5pm–8pm138 flights55.0%
- 8pm–5am88 flights47.6%
Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.6% on time, against 68.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to FAR through the year
December is the weak month at 38.1% on time, against 74.0% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 67.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.4%. 8 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 31,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 12,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 30,820 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.18%, 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. 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.
The 557 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 69.2% on time across 1,008 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. 1,005 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 FAR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.18% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 967 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.