Carrier route record
OOSLC→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Salt Lake City to Chicago
- Flights
- 115
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SLC to ORD lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 115 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,010 at 76.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on SLC to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 113 completed flights
Avg delay
122 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on SLC to ORD, 3,198 flights
These figures cover 115 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 SLC to ORD
SkyWest flew 115 of the 3,198 flights on SLC to ORD, about 4% of it. Its 77.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 77.0% to Envoy at 61.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 115 | 77.0% | 122 min | 1.74% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,010 | 76.8% | 70 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,069 | 75.4% | 89 min | 1.12% | B |
| American Airlines | 968 | 74.0% | 106 min | 1.86% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 36 | 61.1% | 80 min | 0.00% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 76.8%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 36 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am72 flights90.1%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm38 flights54.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.1% of the time, against 54.1% for the afternoon window. That is 36 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 72 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SLC to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202538 flights84.2%
- Oct–Dec 202523 flights—
- Jan–Mar 20264 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202650 flights75.5%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 77.0% on time across 115 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on SLC to ORD logged 38 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 23 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 4 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 50 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 77.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 49% of the 3,179 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.
- 49%National Airspace System
- 38%Carrier
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 1,223 of the 3,179 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,179 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 1,563 minutes out of 3,179, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.74% 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. 9.7% 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 1,250 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 56.2% on time across 113 flights, 21 points below 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 21 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 115 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 SLC to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 115 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 77.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 113 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to SLC, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to ORD76.8%
- United Airlines on SLC to ORD75.4%
- American Airlines on SLC to ORD74.0%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.