Carrier route record

OOORF→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Norfolk to Chicago

Flights: 156
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 6

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

SkyWest on ORF to ORD earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 156 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 397 at 76.7% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's ORF to ORD record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 155 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.64%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.9%

Every carrier on ORF to ORD, 1,865 flights

These figures cover 156 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 ORF to ORD

SkyWest flew 156 of the 1,865 flights on ORF to ORD, about 8% of it. Its 85.8% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.8% to American at 50.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on ORF to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	156	85.8%	88 min	0.64%	A+
Envoy Air	397	76.7%	66 min	2.02%	B
Republic Airways	430	75.8%	62 min	3.02%	B−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	186	74.9%	81 min	7.53%	C−
United Airlines	690	73.7%	71 min	1.74%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	6	50.0%	29 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 3.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 11 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am15 flights—
8am–11am70 flights89.9%
11am–2pm32 flights90.6%
2pm–5pm4 flights—
5pm–8pm35 flights80.0%
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 5pm–8pm at 80.0%. 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 70 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%

Scale runs 80% 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 85.8% on time across 156 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on ORF to ORD logged 16 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 16 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 124 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 85.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,927 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
Extreme weather
1%

33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 635 minutes out of 1,927, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,927 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 791 of the 1,927 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.5% 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 an hour and a half, 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. 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 69.3% on time across 156 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 156 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. 156 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures