Carrier route record
OOORD→SAT
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to San Antonio
- Flights
- 132
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- 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 SAT lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 132 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 833 at 75.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on ORD to SAT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 128 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.03%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on ORD to SAT, 1,966 flights
These figures cover 132 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to SAT
SkyWest flew 132 of the 1,966 flights on ORD to SAT, about 7% of it. Its 80.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.3% to American at 68.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 75.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 548 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 101 | 82.3% | 62 min | 3.96% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 132 | 80.5% | 64 min | 3.03% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 352 | 76.8% | 57 min | 2.56% | B |
| United Airlines | 833 | 75.6% | 74 min | 1.08% | B |
| American Airlines | 548 | 68.7% | 74 min | 2.55% | C |
United leads American by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 132 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split SkyWest's ORD to SAT record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 80.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to SAT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202550 flights87.2%
- Jan–Mar 202639 flights76.3%
- Apr–Jun 202613 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 80.5% on time across 132 flights.
SkyWest on ORD to SAT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 87.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.3%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 44 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.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 1,608 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 28%Extreme weather
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 28% 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 4.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,608 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 737 of the 1,608 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.03%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
7.8% 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.
The 1,041 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 65.9% on time across 132 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 132 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 SAT
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.03% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 128 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to SAT, every carrier
- SkyWest on SAT to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to SAT82.3%
- Envoy Air on ORD to SAT76.8%
- United Airlines on ORD to SAT75.6%
- American Airlines on ORD to SAT68.7%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) 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.