Carrier route record
OORST→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Rochester to Chicago
- Flights
- 506
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on RST to ORD earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.3% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average close to two hours. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 506 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on RST to ORD runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 213 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
56.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 485 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.15%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.1%
Every carrier on RST to ORD, 1,053 flights
These figures cover 506 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 24.1% 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 RST to ORD
SkyWest flew 506 of the 1,053 flights on RST to ORD, about 48% of it. Its 56.3% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 73.4% to SkyWest at 56.3%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 547 | 73.4% | 63 min | 4.94% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 506 | 56.3% | 109 min | 4.15% | D− |
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am247 flights68.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm12 flights—
- 2pm–5pm40 flights42.5%
- 5pm–8pm207 flights44.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 68.8% of the time, against 42.5% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 247 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on RST to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 36.4% on time, against 85.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 68.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 42.9%. 25 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 52% of the 23,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 16%National Airspace System
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,086 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 12,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.15%, 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. 24.1% 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 268 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 53.6% on time across 506 flights, within 3 points 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. 506 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 RST to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.15% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 485 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.