Carrier route record

OOPIT→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Pittsburgh to Chicago

Flights: 237
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 5

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

SkyWest on PIT to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 237 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,629 at 84.2% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.2% on time across 1,629 flights.

On time

65.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 232 completed flights

Avg delay

105 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.6%

Every carrier on PIT to ORD, 3,950 flights

These figures cover 237 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 PIT to ORD

SkyWest flew 237 of the 3,950 flights on PIT to ORD, about 6% of it. Its 65.1% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 84.2% to SkyWest at 65.1%. One 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 84.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 69.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 604 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PIT to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	1,629	84.2%	74 min	1.66%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	190	78.3%	105 min	2.63%	B
United Airlines	1,290	77.9%	95 min	1.86%	B
American Airlines	604	69.9%	113 min	2.98%	C
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	237	65.1%	105 min	2.11%	C

The spread between Republic and American is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 237 flights.

5am–8am15 flights—
8am–11am22 flights—
11am–2pm28 flights—
2pm–5pm41 flights59.0%
5pm–8pm130 flights55.1%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 59.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.

Across the year

SkyWest on PIT to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202570 flights50.0%
Oct–Dec 202524 flights—
Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026124 flights75.0%

Scale runs 40% to 80%. 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 65.1% on time across 237 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on PIT to ORD logged 70 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 24 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 19 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 65.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.0%. 17 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. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 8,475 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.

National Airspace System
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Carrier
24%
Extreme weather
6%

43% 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 3,633 minutes out of 8,475, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,475 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 14.7% 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 413 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.5% on time across 237 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 237 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 PIT to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 237 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 65.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 232 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