Carrier route record
OOORD→SAT
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to San Antonio
- Flights
- 104
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to SAT lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 104 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 410 at 76.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 100 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.85%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on ORD to SAT, 2,001 flights
These figures cover 104 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to SAT
SkyWest flew 104 of the 2,001 flights on ORD to SAT, about 5% of it. Its 79.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. 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 64.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 497 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 | 104 | 79.0% | 61 min | 3.85% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 410 | 76.3% | 62 min | 2.44% | B |
| United Airlines | 889 | 74.0% | 73 min | 0.90% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 497 | 64.3% | 86 min | 1.81% | D |
The spread between Envoy and American is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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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 104 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 79.0% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to SAT through the year
- Jul–Sep 20252 flights—
- 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 79.0% on time across 104 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on ORD to SAT logged 2 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 50 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 39 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 13 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 79.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on ORD to SAT runs when it is late
SkyWest on ORD to SAT often beats the schedule: 31 of 100 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 21 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 3 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early31 flights31.0%
- Within 15 min48 flights48.0%
- 15–29 min late10 flights10.0%
- 30–59 min late3 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights4.0%
- 2+ hours late4 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 100 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 17 of 100 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on ORD to SAT
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 December 2025, 3 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 December 2025 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 May 2026 | 2 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 June 2026 | 2 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 May 2026 | 2 hours | Carrier |
| 2 December 2025 | 1 hour 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 55% of the 1,270 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,270 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 695 of the 1,270 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.85%, against 1.89% 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
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.4% on time across 104 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 104 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 3.85% 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. 100 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 SAT76.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to SAT74.0%
- American Airlines on ORD to SAT64.3%
- 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
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.