Carrier route record
OOORD→TYS
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Knoxville
- Flights
- 815
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- 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 TYS 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 815 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to TYS runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 797 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.7%
Every carrier on ORD to TYS, 2,219 flights
These figures cover 815 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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 TYS
SkyWest flew 815 of the 2,219 flights on ORD to TYS, about 37% of it. Its 71.6% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 79.1% to PSA at 60.2%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 176 | 79.1% | 46 min | 2.27% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 78 | 75.6% | 59 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 815 | 71.6% | 75 min | 1.84% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 316 | 61.0% | 82 min | 2.53% | D |
| PSA Airlines | 834 | 60.2% | 143 min | 6.71% | 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 18 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–8am228 flights79.5%
- 8am–11am194 flights73.4%
- 11am–2pm28 flights—
- 2pm–5pm237 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm128 flights61.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.7% on time, against 79.5% for the 5am–8am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 237 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to TYS through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 61.4%. August is the strongest month at 83.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 22 points. June was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.6%. 15 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 17,000 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
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
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 7,490 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,903 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 79.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.
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. 11.2% 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.
At 475 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.7% on time across 815 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 815 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 TYS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 815 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 71.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 797 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to TYS, every carrier
- SkyWest on TYS to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to TYS79.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to TYS61.0%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to TYS60.2%
- 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.