Carrier route record
OOORD→RIC
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Richmond
- Flights
- 718
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to RIC 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 718 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 379 at 78.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to RIC runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 157 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 685 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on ORD to RIC, 2,219 flights
These figures cover 718 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% 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 RIC
SkyWest flew 718 of the 2,219 flights on ORD to RIC, about 32% of it. Its 61.9% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.9% to United at 58.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 | 379 | 78.9% | 59 min | 2.11% | B |
| Republic Airways | 827 | 77.3% | 65 min | 2.42% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 718 | 61.9% | 96 min | 4.32% | D− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 295 | 58.7% | 78 min | 2.03% | D |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 78.9%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 31 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am42 flights81.0%
- 8am–11am228 flights73.1%
- 11am–2pm82 flights68.3%
- 2pm–5pm195 flights51.1%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am119 flights50.9%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 81.0% for the 5am–8am 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 228 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to RIC through the year
December is the weak month at 38.0% on time, against 77.8% in September. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 51.5%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 25,000 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 25%Extreme weather
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 25% 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 4.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,112 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 12,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.32%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 16.6% 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 642 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 66.1% on time across 719 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 718 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 RIC
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 685 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to RIC, every carrier
- SkyWest on RIC to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to RIC78.9%
- Republic Airways on ORD to RIC77.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to RIC58.7%
- 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.