Carrier route record
OOORD→GRR
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 838
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- 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 GRR carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 838 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 929 at 76.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 929 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 806 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.0%
Every carrier on ORD to GRR, 4,034 flights
These figures cover 838 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.6% 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 GRR
SkyWest flew 838 of the 4,034 flights on ORD to GRR, about 21% of it. Its 70.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 76.1% to PSA at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 531 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 929 | 76.1% | 63 min | 3.88% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 661 | 74.5% | 71 min | 3.03% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 838 | 70.8% | 89 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,073 | 66.9% | 78 min | 1.21% | C |
| American Airlines | 531 | 58.7% | 85 min | 3.39% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 640 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.9% 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 30 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am98 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am242 flights68.2%
- 11am–2pm177 flights69.9%
- 2pm–5pm173 flights59.6%
- 5pm–8pm22 flights—
- 8pm–5am126 flights75.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 59.6% for the afternoon window. That is 30 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 242 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to GRR through the year
December is the weak month at 56.9% on time, against 91.2% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 137 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 65.5%. 10 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 43% of the 21,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,849 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 8,955 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.46%, 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. 14.6% 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 137 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.5% on time across 837 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 838 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 GRR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.46% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 806 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to GRR, every carrier
- SkyWest on GRR to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to GRR76.1%
- Republic Airways on ORD to GRR74.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to GRR66.9%
- American Airlines on ORD to GRR58.7%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.