Carrier route record
OOORD→IND
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 649
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- 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 IND 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 a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 649 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 576 at 80.3% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 80.3% on time across 576 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 606 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on ORD to IND, 5,206 flights
These figures cover 649 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 IND
SkyWest flew 649 of the 5,206 flights on ORD to IND, about 12% of it. Its 69.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.3% to American at 67.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 515 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 576 | 80.3% | 57 min | 1.39% | B |
| Republic Airways | 2,716 | 76.5% | 79 min | 3.35% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 649 | 69.5% | 79 min | 6.47% | C− |
| United Airlines | 750 | 69.4% | 71 min | 2.27% | C |
| American Airlines | 515 | 67.4% | 71 min | 6.02% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 6.0% 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 25 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am101 flights74.2%
- 8am–11am69 flights76.1%
- 11am–2pm199 flights75.1%
- 2pm–5pm224 flights64.6%
- 5pm–8pm16 flights—
- 8pm–5am40 flights51.5%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.5% on time, against 76.1% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 224 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to IND through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 90.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 96 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 57.8%. 20 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 45% of the 15,000 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,523 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 6,480 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 6.47%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 12.0% 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 177 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 67.2% on time across 649 flights, within 2 points 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. 649 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 IND
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 606 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to IND, every carrier
- SkyWest on IND to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to IND80.3%
- Republic Airways on ORD to IND76.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to IND69.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to IND67.4%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) 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.