Carrier route record

OOORD→GEG

SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Spokane

Flights: 390
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 52%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on ORD to GEG draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 390 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to GEG runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 122 extra late arrivals.

On time

65.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 379 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.79%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

64.7%

Every carrier on ORD to GEG, 744 flights

These figures cover 390 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 GEG

SkyWest flew 390 of the 744 flights on ORD to GEG, most of the route. Its 65.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 100.0% to American at 63.7%. Two 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 GEG
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	2	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	390	65.4%	64 min	1.79%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	352	63.7%	78 min	0.57%	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 31 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–11am231 flights75.5%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm62 flights45.0%
5pm–8pm67 flights52.4%
8pm–5am30 flights—

Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 75.5% of the time, against 45.0% for the afternoon window. That is 31 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 231 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORD to GEG through the year

Jul–Sep 2025139 flights76.1%
Oct–Dec 202572 flights63.8%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights48.8%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights65.9%

Scale runs 40% 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 65.4% on time across 390 flights.

SkyWest on ORD to GEG did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 48.8%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 98 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, Friday is the strongest day at 72.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%. 10 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 8,363 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
22%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
18%

Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,363 reported delay minutes.

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 3,331 of the 8,363 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.79% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.03%.

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. 11.3% 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 1,498 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 68.6% on time across 391 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 390 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 GEG

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 390 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 65.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 379 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