Carrier route record
OOTUS→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Tucson to Chicago
- Flights
- 462
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 44%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on TUS 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 462 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on TUS 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
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 451 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.9%
Every carrier on TUS to ORD, 1,039 flights
These figures cover 462 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 TUS to ORD
SkyWest flew 462 of the 1,039 flights on TUS to ORD, about 44% of it. Its 77.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to American at 73.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airthin sample | 19 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 462 | 77.6% | 65 min | 1.52% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 75.3% | 95 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 481 | 73.3% | 118 min | 1.87% | C |
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 14 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–8am141 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am53 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm268 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 72.0% on time against 86.3% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 268 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on TUS to ORD through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 69.5%. February is the strongest month at 84.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 15 points. April was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.2%. 23 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 6,565 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
37% 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 6,565 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 6,565 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 86.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.52% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.87%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,437 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 71.8% on time across 463 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 462 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 TUS to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 462 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 77.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 451 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TUS to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to TUS, the return leg
- American Airlines on TUS to ORD73.3%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.