Carrier route record
OOSAT→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · San Antonio to Chicago
- Flights
- 132
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SAT to ORD draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 132 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 833 at 80.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on SAT to ORD runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 117 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 126 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.3%
Every carrier on SAT to ORD, 1,968 flights
These figures cover 132 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 SAT to ORD
SkyWest flew 132 of the 1,968 flights on SAT to ORD, about 7% of it. Its 65.9% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.1% to SkyWest at 65.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 80.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 73.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 550 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 833 | 80.1% | 87 min | 1.20% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 352 | 76.6% | 67 min | 2.84% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 101 | 74.7% | 54 min | 4.95% | C− |
| American Airlines | 550 | 73.1% | 74 min | 2.55% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 132 | 65.9% | 61 min | 4.55% | C− |
United leads American by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 132 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split SkyWest's SAT to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 65.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
SkyWest on SAT to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights60.0%
- Oct–Dec 202550 flights70.2%
- Jan–Mar 202639 flights67.6%
- Apr–Jun 202613 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 65.9% on time across 132 flights.
SkyWest on SAT to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 70.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 60.0%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 44 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.
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 2,611 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,611 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 907 of the 2,611 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.55%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 10.3% 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 1,041 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 80.5% on time across 132 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 132 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 SAT to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.55% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 126 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAT to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to SAT, the return leg
- United Airlines on SAT to ORD80.1%
- Envoy Air on SAT to ORD76.6%
- Republic Airways on SAT to ORD74.7%
- American Airlines on SAT to ORD73.1%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- 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.