Carrier route record

OOORD→ORF

SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Norfolk

Flights: 156
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
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 ORF sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 156 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 397 at 83.2% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.2% on time across 397 flights.

On time

69.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 153 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.92%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.8%

Every carrier on ORD to ORF, 1,863 flights

These figures cover 156 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 ORF

SkyWest flew 156 of the 1,863 flights on ORD to ORF, about 8% of it. Its 69.3% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.2% to PSA at 52.4%. Two 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 83.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 66.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 690 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to ORF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	397	83.2%	51 min	2.02%	B
Republic Airways	428	77.4%	73 min	1.40%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	156	69.3%	51 min	1.92%	C
United Airlines	690	66.9%	70 min	1.74%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	6	66.7%	39 min	0.00%	C+
PSA Airlinesthin sample	186	52.4%	89 min	10.75%	F−

The spread between Envoy and United is 16 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 16 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 34 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am59 flights86.4%
8am–11am19 flights—
11am–2pm13 flights—
2pm–5pm41 flights52.5%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am24 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.4% of the time, against 52.5% for the afternoon window. That is 34 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 59 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORD to ORF through the year

Oct–Dec 202516 flights—
Jan–Mar 202616 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026124 flights72.7%

Scale runs 65% to 80%. 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 69.3% on time across 156 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on ORD to ORF logged 16 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 16 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 124 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 69.3% annual figure is the one to use.

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 2,384 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
6%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,384 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,384 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 881 of the 2,384 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 9.2% 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.

The 717 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 85.8% on time across 156 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 156 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 ORF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 156 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 69.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 153 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures