Carrier route record

OOORD→PIT

SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Pittsburgh

Flights: 237
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
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 PIT sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 237 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,628 at 81.4% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.4% on time across 1,628 flights.

On time

68.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 232 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.9%

Every carrier on ORD to PIT, 3,948 flights

These figures cover 237 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 PIT

SkyWest flew 237 of the 3,948 flights on ORD to PIT, about 6% of it. Its 68.5% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.2% to American at 55.0%. 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 81.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 55.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 603 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to PIT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	189	83.2%	64 min	2.12%	B
Republic Airways	1,628	81.4%	80 min	2.27%	B
United Airlines	1,291	75.8%	66 min	1.01%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	237	68.5%	66 min	2.11%	C
American Airlines	603	55.0%	105 min	2.99%	D

The spread between Republic and American is 26 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 26 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 30 points, against 26 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am35 flights80.0%
8am–11am8 flights—
11am–2pm34 flights90.9%
2pm–5pm145 flights61.3%
5pm–8pm15 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.9% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 61.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 145 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORD to PIT through the year

Jul–Sep 202570 flights65.7%
Oct–Dec 202524 flights—
Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026124 flights76.0%

Scale runs 55% 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 68.5% on time across 237 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on ORD to PIT logged 70 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 24 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 19 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 68.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 70.3%. 11 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 4,820 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
6%

41% 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 4,820 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 4,820 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 1,832 of the 4,820 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.2% 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.

At 413 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.1% on time across 237 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 237 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 PIT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 237 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 68.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 232 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