Carrier route record
OOORD→MSY
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to New Orleans
- Flights
- 131
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to MSY lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 131 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 466 at 83.8% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.8% on time across 466 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 129 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on ORD to MSY, 2,402 flights
These figures cover 131 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to MSY
SkyWest flew 131 of the 2,402 flights on ORD to MSY, about 5% of it. Its 79.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.8% to American at 62.6%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 83.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 62.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 401 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 466 | 83.8% | 58 min | 1.93% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 81.8% | 123 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 131 | 79.1% | 55 min | 1.53% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 335 | 78.2% | 72 min | 1.49% | B |
| United Airlines | 842 | 75.1% | 66 min | 1.07% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 216 | 67.5% | 80 min | 6.02% | C− |
| American Airlines | 401 | 62.6% | 90 min | 2.24% | D |
The spread between Envoy and American is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 13 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am65 flights86.2%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm12 flights—
- 2pm–5pm54 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.2% of the time, against 73.1% for the afternoon window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 65 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to MSY through the year
- Jul–Sep 202535 flights85.7%
- Oct–Dec 202524 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202612 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202660 flights77.6%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 79.1% on time across 131 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on ORD to MSY logged 35 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 24 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 12 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 60 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 79.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 1,485 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 42%Carrier
- 27%Extreme weather
- 16%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 27% 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 4.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,485 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 631 of the 1,485 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 837 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.9% on time across 131 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 131 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 MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 131 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 79.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 129 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSY, every carrier
- SkyWest on MSY to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSY83.8%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSY78.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSY75.1%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to MSY67.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSY62.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.