Carrier route record
OOORD→TUS
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Tucson
- Flights
- 463
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 44%
- 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 TUS sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 463 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to TUS runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 450 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.9%
Every carrier on ORD to TUS, 1,041 flights
These figures cover 463 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 TUS
SkyWest flew 463 of the 1,041 flights on ORD to TUS, about 44% of it. Its 71.8% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 71.8% to Envoy at 57.9%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 463 | 71.8% | 72 min | 1.94% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 71.4% | 88 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 482 | 66.2% | 84 min | 1.87% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 19 | 57.9% | 61 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 12 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–8am—
- 8am–11am266 flights75.4%
- 11am–2pm11 flights—
- 2pm–5pm10 flights—
- 5pm–8pm87 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am89 flights67.4%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 75.4% for the 8am–11am 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 266 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to TUS through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 49.1%. August is the strongest month at 93.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 44 points. April was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.5%. 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 9,076 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
- 22%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
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 4,469 of the 9,076 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,076 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.86%.
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. 9.3% 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 1,437 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 77.6% on time across 462 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 463 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 TUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 463 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 71.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 450 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to TUS, every carrier
- SkyWest on TUS to ORD, the return leg
- American Airlines on ORD to TUS66.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.