Carrier route record

OOORF→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Norfolk to Chicago

Flights: 279
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on ORF to ORD lands a B, 3 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 a little over an hour on average. That rests on 279 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 448 at 80.7% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.7% on time across 448 flights.

On time

80.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 274 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.43%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

76.7%

Every carrier on ORF to ORD, 1,959 flights

These figures cover 279 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.

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Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on ORF to ORD

SkyWest flew 279 of the 1,959 flights on ORF to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 80.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.7% to American at 40.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.7% of the time; United Airlines manages 74.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 592 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORF to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	448	80.7%	64 min	1.56%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	279	80.7%	75 min	1.43%	B
PSA Airlinesthin sample	186	74.9%	81 min	7.53%	C−
Envoy Air	443	74.6%	74 min	2.48%	C
United Airlines	592	74.5%	72 min	1.52%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	11	40.0%	79 min	0.00%	F+

Republic leads United by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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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 14 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am57 flights76.8%
8am–11am111 flights83.5%
11am–2pm32 flights90.6%
2pm–5pm4 flights—
5pm–8pm75 flights78.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.6% on time, ahead of 5am–8am at 76.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 111 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ORF to ORD through the year

Oct–Dec 202516 flights—
Jan–Mar 202616 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026124 flights89.4%
Jul–Sep 2026123 flights73.9%

Scale runs 65% 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 80.7% on time across 279 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on ORF to ORD logged 16 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 16 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 124 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 123 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 75.7%, a spread of 11 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late SkyWest on ORF to ORD runs when it is late

SkyWest on ORF to ORD often beats the schedule: 91 of 274 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 53 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.

15+ min early91 flights33.2%
Within 15 min130 flights47.4%
15–29 min late16 flights5.8%
30–59 min late18 flights6.6%
1–2 hours late11 flights4.0%
2+ hours late8 flights2.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 274 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

12 of 49 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. In the other direction, 16 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.

The worst days

Worst days for SkyWest on ORF to ORD

The latest arrival of the period was on 15 July 2026, 7 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across July, June, April and May, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of SkyWest on ORF to ORD in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
15 July 2026	7 hours 5 minutes	Carrier
26 June 2026	5 hours 50 minutes	Carrier
18 July 2026	4 hours 52 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 April 2026	4 hours 20 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 May 2026	3 hours 50 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 47% of the 3,992 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
47%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,881 of the 3,992 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,992 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.9% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 717 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 68.2% on time across 280 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 279 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 ORF to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 279 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 80.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 274 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures