Carrier route record
OOORD→ROC
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Rochester
- Flights
- 225
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- 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 ROC draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 225 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 695 at 80.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.2% on time across 695 flights.
Key figures
On time
63.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 214 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on ORD to ROC, 2,320 flights
These figures cover 225 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 ROC
SkyWest flew 225 of the 2,320 flights on ORD to ROC, about 10% of it. Its 63.6% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.2% to United at 63.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 63.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 587 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 695 | 80.2% | 67 min | 2.16% | B |
| Envoy Air | 813 | 80.1% | 62 min | 2.34% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 225 | 63.6% | 68 min | 4.44% | D− |
| United Airlines | 587 | 63.2% | 66 min | 1.36% | D |
The spread between Republic and United is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 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 31 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am84 flights83.3%
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm107 flights52.5%
- 5pm–8pm28 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
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 83.3% of the time, against 52.5% for the afternoon window. That is 31 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 107 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to ROC through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights80.0%
- Oct–Dec 20252 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202661 flights49.1%
- Apr–Jun 2026132 flights65.6%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. 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 63.6% on time across 225 flights.
SkyWest on ORD to ROC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 49.1%, a swing of 31 points on roughly 75 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, Monday is the strongest day at 68.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 63.3%. 6 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 44% of the 5,264 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
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 5,264 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 5,264 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 2,313 of the 5,264 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.44%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 14.5% 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 528 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 runs 62.4% on time across 225 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 225 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 ROC
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.44% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to ROC, every carrier
- SkyWest on ROC to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to ROC80.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to ROC80.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to ROC63.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.