Carrier route record
OOORD→ROA
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Roanoke
- Flights
- 557
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to ROA 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 557 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to ROA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 542 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.15%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on ORD to ROA, 848 flights
These figures cover 557 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 ROA
SkyWest flew 557 of the 848 flights on ORD to ROA, most of the route. Its 68.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 72.1% to SkyWest at 68.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 291 | 72.1% | 71 min | 5.50% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 557 | 68.3% | 66 min | 2.15% | C |
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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am142 flights70.5%
- 8am–11am36 flights57.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm213 flights72.2%
- 5pm–8pm166 flights63.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 72.2% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 57.6%. 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 213 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to ROA through the year
July is the worst month at 53.4% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 78.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. September was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.4%. 13 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.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 11,351 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 4,142 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.54%.
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. 9.8% 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 530 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 72.6% on time across 557 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. 557 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 ROA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 557 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 68.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 542 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.