Carrier route record
OOORD→MSN
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Madison
- Flights
- 1,266
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- 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 MSN carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% 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 1,266 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 651 at 78.4% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.4% on time across 651 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,200 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.4%
Every carrier on ORD to MSN, 4,029 flights
These figures cover 1,266 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% 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 MSN
SkyWest flew 1,266 of the 4,029 flights on ORD to MSN, about 31% of it. Its 67.0% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 78.4% to PSA at 49.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 78.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 68.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 936 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 651 | 78.4% | 76 min | 2.46% | B |
| Envoy Air | 1,068 | 76.9% | 67 min | 3.93% | B− |
| United Airlines | 936 | 68.7% | 70 min | 2.03% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,266 | 67.0% | 97 min | 5.13% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 108 | 49.5% | 127 min | 10.19% | F− |
Envoy Air cancels 3.9% 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 21 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am451 flights75.7%
- 11am–2pm187 flights68.4%
- 2pm–5pm272 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm141 flights54.6%
- 8pm–5am199 flights55.4%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.6% on time, against 75.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 451 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to MSN through the year
December is the weak month at 43.9% on time, against 86.1% in June. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 190 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 70.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.4%. 9 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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 24%Extreme weather
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 24% 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 3.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 38,374 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 14,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.13%, 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. 15.4% 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 108 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 66.8% on time across 1,268 flights, within half a point 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 1,266 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 MSN
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.13% 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. 1,200 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSN, every carrier
- SkyWest on MSN to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSN78.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSN76.9%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSN68.7%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to MSN49.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.