Carrier route record
OOORD→MCI
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Kansas City
- Flights
- 945
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- 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 MCI carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 945 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 567 at 77.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.2% on time across 567 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 907 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.9%
Every carrier on ORD to MCI, 4,146 flights
These figures cover 945 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% 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 MCI
SkyWest flew 945 of the 4,146 flights on ORD to MCI, about 23% of it. Its 67.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.2% to American at 58.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 567 | 77.2% | 66 min | 1.59% | B |
| Envoy Air | 820 | 74.2% | 60 min | 3.41% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,435 | 71.6% | 71 min | 1.46% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 945 | 67.9% | 87 min | 3.81% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 59.0% | 56 min | 2.50% | D |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 339 | 58.8% | 90 min | 2.65% | D |
Envoy Air cancels 3.4% 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 34 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am330 flights80.7%
- 8am–11am133 flights71.9%
- 11am–2pm76 flights50.7%
- 2pm–5pm211 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm123 flights47.1%
- 8pm–5am72 flights58.5%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.1% on time, against 80.7% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 330 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to MCI through the year
December is the weak month at 51.5% on time, against 95.1% in August. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 160 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.0%. 16 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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 26%Extreme weather
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 26% 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 4.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,259 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 11,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.81%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.9% 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 403 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 69.5% on time across 943 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. 945 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 MCI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.81% 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. 907 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MCI, every carrier
- SkyWest on MCI to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to MCI77.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to MCI74.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MCI71.6%
- American Airlines on ORD to MCI58.8%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.