Carrier route record
OOSYR→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Syracuse to Chicago
- Flights
- 241
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SYR to ORD draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 241 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 686 at 79.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 686 flights.
Key figures
On time
59.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 230 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.15%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on SYR to ORD, 2,187 flights
These figures cover 241 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.0% 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 SYR to ORD
SkyWest flew 241 of the 2,187 flights on SYR to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 59.1% on time is 15 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 79.2% to SkyWest at 59.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 79.1% of the time; Republic Airways manages 72.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 752 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 103 | 79.2% | 103 min | 1.94% | B |
| Envoy Air | 686 | 79.1% | 82 min | 2.62% | B |
| United Airlines | 405 | 75.3% | 60 min | 1.73% | B |
| Republic Airways | 752 | 72.7% | 79 min | 3.86% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 241 | 59.1% | 76 min | 4.15% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 3.9% 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 44 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am37 flights55.6%
- 8am–11am20 flights—
- 11am–2pm53 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm96 flights51.1%
- 8pm–5am35 flights35.5%
Scale runs 25% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 35.5% on time, against 79.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 96 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SYR to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202598 flights51.1%
- Jan–Mar 202635 flights55.9%
- Apr–Jun 202683 flights61.5%
Scale runs 45% to 65%. 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 59.1% on time across 241 flights.
SkyWest on SYR to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 61.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 51.1%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 80 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.7% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 47.1%. 29 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 7,124 reported delay minutes.
- 30%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 21%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,124 reported delay minutes.
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. 17.0% 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 607 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 66.8% on time across 241 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 241 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 SYR to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.15% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 230 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SYR to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to SYR, the return leg
- American Airlines on SYR to ORD79.2%
- Envoy Air on SYR to ORD79.1%
- United Airlines on SYR to ORD75.3%
- Republic Airways on SYR to ORD72.7%
- 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.