Carrier route record
OOORD→LEX
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Lexington
- Flights
- 1,384
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 81%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to LEX carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% 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 1,384 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on ORD to LEX runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,332 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.3%
Every carrier on ORD to LEX, 1,702 flights
These figures cover 1,384 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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 LEX
SkyWest flew 1,384 of the 1,702 flights on ORD to LEX, most of the route. Its 68.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 72.9% to SkyWest at 68.5%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 295 | 72.9% | 77 min | 1.36% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 69.6% | 62 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,384 | 68.5% | 89 min | 3.54% | C− |
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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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am296 flights71.7%
- 11am–2pm136 flights79.9%
- 2pm–5pm375 flights66.8%
- 5pm–8pm213 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am363 flights65.1%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 79.9% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 65.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 375 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to LEX through the year
August is the worst month at 57.3% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 82.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. September was the busiest month here, with 206 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.7%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on ORD to LEX runs when it is late
The 420 late arrivals split 126 under half an hour, 104 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 190 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early308 flights23.1%
- Within 15 min604 flights45.3%
- 15–29 min late126 flights9.5%
- 30–59 min late104 flights7.8%
- 1–2 hours late94 flights7.1%
- 2+ hours late96 flights7.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,332 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
44 of 358 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 106 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 LEX.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on ORD to LEX
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 January 2026, 20 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 January 2026 | 20 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 September 2025 | 12 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 May 2026 | 12 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 April 2026 | 10 hours 22 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 25 July 2026 | 10 hours 10 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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 17%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 37,160 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 37,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.54%, against 1.89% 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
14.3% 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 323 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.4% on time across 1,384 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,384 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on ORD to LEX
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.54% 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. 1,332 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.