Carrier route record
OOORD→GRR
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 881
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 4.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 881 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 967 at 75.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.2% on time across 967 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 843 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on ORD to GRR, 4,077 flights
These figures cover 881 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to GRR
SkyWest flew 881 of the 4,077 flights on ORD to GRR, about 22% of it. Its 71.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.2% 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 75.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 478 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 967 | 75.2% | 64 min | 3.93% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 881 | 71.8% | 86 min | 4.09% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 665 | 71.7% | 70 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,084 | 66.2% | 77 min | 1.01% | C |
| American Airlines | 478 | 58.7% | 87 min | 3.77% | 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.
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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 25 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am150 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am191 flights72.0%
- 11am–2pm143 flights72.3%
- 2pm–5pm200 flights61.6%
- 5pm–8pm22 flights—
- 8pm–5am175 flights68.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.5% of the time, against 61.6% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 200 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. August was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on ORD to GRR runs when it is late
When SkyWest on ORD to GRR is late it tends to be very late: 121 of its 238 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 57 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early173 flights20.5%
- Within 15 min432 flights51.2%
- 15–29 min late59 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late58 flights6.9%
- 1–2 hours late64 flights7.6%
- 2+ hours late57 flights6.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 843 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
27 of 208 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 57 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at GRR.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on ORD to GRR
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 July 2026, 9 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 July 2026 | 9 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 December 2025 | 7 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 February 2026 | 7 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 January 2026 | 6 hours 29 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 August 2026 | 5 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
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 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 18%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,480 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.09%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
14.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 runs 70.4% on time across 879 flights, within about 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. 881 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 4.09% 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. 843 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 GRR75.2%
- Republic Airways on ORD to GRR71.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to GRR66.2%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.