Carrier route record
OOORD→MLI
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Moline
- Flights
- 1,560
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 71%
- 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 MLI carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.4% 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 1,560 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 MLI runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,473 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.5%
Every carrier on ORD to MLI, 2,191 flights
These figures cover 1,560 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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 MLI
SkyWest flew 1,560 of the 2,191 flights on ORD to MLI, most of the route. Its 67.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 68.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 70.8% to Republic at 44.4%. One 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 Air | 621 | 70.8% | 56 min | 2.74% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,560 | 67.8% | 83 min | 5.38% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 10 | 44.4% | 54 min | 10.00% | F− |
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,560 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am406 flights73.6%
- 11am–2pm203 flights65.7%
- 2pm–5pm417 flights65.3%
- 5pm–8pm215 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am319 flights67.2%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.2% on time, against 73.6% 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 417 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to MLI through the year
December is the weak month at 54.5% on time, against 81.1% in September. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 223 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 60.6%. 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 39,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 39,322 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 5.38%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 14.3% 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 139 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 70.4% on time across 1,557 flights, within 3 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 1,560 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 MLI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.38% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,473 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.