Carrier route record
OOORD→OMA
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Omaha
- Flights
- 381
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- 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 OMA draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 381 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 855 at 75.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to OMA runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 144 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 370 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.3%
Every carrier on ORD to OMA, 3,022 flights
These figures cover 381 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 OMA
SkyWest flew 381 of the 3,022 flights on ORD to OMA, about 13% of it. Its 63.2% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.8% to American at 50.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 855 | 75.8% | 55 min | 3.27% | B− |
| United Airlines | 1,348 | 70.6% | 65 min | 1.19% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 170 | 70.1% | 66 min | 3.53% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 381 | 63.2% | 83 min | 2.89% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 57.1% | 60 min | 12.50% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 260 | 50.0% | 63 min | 1.92% | F |
Envoy Air cancels 3.3% 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 25 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am150 flights71.8%
- 11am–2pm32 flights51.6%
- 2pm–5pm87 flights58.3%
- 5pm–8pm38 flights47.2%
- 8pm–5am50 flights59.6%
Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.2% on time, against 71.8% 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 150 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to OMA through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025104 flights71.3%
- Oct–Dec 2025115 flights67.0%
- Jan–Mar 202631 flights48.4%
- Apr–Jun 2026131 flights57.1%
Scale runs 40% to 75%. 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 63.2% on time across 381 flights.
SkyWest on ORD to OMA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 71.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 48.4%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 95 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 49.1%. 25 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 71.8% on time here. The split is drawn from 11,262 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. carrier at 31%, national airspace system at 30% and late-arriving aircraft at 29% split the 11,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations run at 2.89%, 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. 15.7% 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 416 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.5% on time across 384 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 381 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 OMA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.89% 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. 370 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to OMA, every carrier
- SkyWest on OMA to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to OMA75.8%
- United Airlines on ORD to OMA70.6%
- Republic Airways on ORD to OMA70.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to OMA50.0%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.