Carrier route record
OOORD→LEX
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Lexington
- Flights
- 1,415
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- 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 LEX sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,415 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to LEX runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 85 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,370 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.8%
Every carrier on ORD to LEX, 1,733 flights
These figures cover 1,415 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 LEX
SkyWest flew 1,415 of the 1,733 flights on ORD to LEX, most of the route. Its 69.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.8%. 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 69.1%. 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) | 1,415 | 69.1% | 92 min | 2.97% | C |
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am277 flights74.3%
- 11am–2pm147 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm435 flights65.6%
- 5pm–8pm211 flights65.5%
- 8pm–5am344 flights67.1%
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 80.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 65.5%. 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 435 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to LEX through the year
July is the worst month at 55.7% on time, 27 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 75.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 62.7%. 13 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 39,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 16%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 38,911 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 15,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.97%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 14.5% 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 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 runs 70.6% on time across 1,415 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,415 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 2.97% 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. 1,370 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.