Carrier route record
OOROC→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Rochester to Chicago
- Flights
- 225
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ROC to ORD draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 2.2 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 225 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 711 at 81.1% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.1% on time across 711 flights.
Key figures
On time
62.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 218 completed flights
Avg delay
133 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on ROC to ORD, 2,340 flights
These figures cover 225 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.7% 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 ROC to ORD
SkyWest flew 225 of the 2,340 flights on ROC to ORD, about 10% of it. Its 62.4% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.1% to SkyWest at 62.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 81.1% of the time; United Airlines manages 67.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 591 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 711 | 81.1% | 86 min | 2.39% | B |
| Envoy Air | 813 | 77.8% | 87 min | 2.21% | B |
| United Airlines | 591 | 67.6% | 85 min | 1.35% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 225 | 62.4% | 133 min | 3.11% | D− |
The spread between Republic and United 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 56 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am84 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm94 flights36.0%
- 8pm–5am41 flights56.4%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 36.0% on time, against 91.7% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 94 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ROC to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 20252 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202661 flights35.1%
- Apr–Jun 2026132 flights66.7%
Scale runs 25% to 100%. 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 62.4% on time across 225 flights.
SkyWest on ROC to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 35.1%, a swing of 58 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, Monday is the strongest day at 69.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.3%. 16 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 11,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 10,883 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.11%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 19.7% 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.
The 528 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 runs 63.6% on time across 225 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 225 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 ROC to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.11% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.2 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 218 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ROC to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to ROC, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ROC to ORD81.1%
- Envoy Air on ROC to ORD77.8%
- United Airlines on ROC to ORD67.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.