Carrier route record
OOPWM→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Portland to Chicago
- Flights
- 300
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on PWM to ORD draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 300 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 558 at 82.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on PWM to ORD runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 124 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 287 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.2%
Every carrier on PWM to ORD, 1,486 flights
These figures cover 300 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 PWM to ORD
SkyWest flew 300 of the 1,486 flights on PWM to ORD, about 20% of it. Its 65.2% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.3% to SkyWest at 65.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 558 | 82.3% | 83 min | 3.41% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 200 | 82.2% | 97 min | 4.00% | B− |
| United Airlines | 428 | 76.6% | 94 min | 2.10% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 300 | 65.2% | 89 min | 4.00% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 3.4% 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 17 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am23 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm21 flights—
- 2pm–5pm124 flights53.3%
- 5pm–8pm132 flights70.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 70.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 17 points.
Across the year
SkyWest on PWM to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202591 flights66.3%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights55.8%
- Jan–Mar 202659 flights53.7%
- Apr–Jun 202660 flights87.9%
Scale runs 45% 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 65.2% on time across 300 flights.
SkyWest on PWM to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 87.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 53.7%, a swing of 34 points on roughly 75 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 72.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 55.0%. 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. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 8,928 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 4,793 of the 8,928 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,928 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.00%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 11.5% 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 900 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 69.4% on time across 300 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 300 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 PWM to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.00% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 287 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PWM to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to PWM, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PWM to ORD82.3%
- Envoy Air on PWM to ORD82.2%
- United Airlines on PWM to ORD76.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.