Carrier route record
OOTYS→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Knoxville to Chicago
- Flights
- 815
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on TYS to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 815 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on TYS to ORD runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 783 completed flights
Avg delay
110 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.2%
Every carrier on TYS to ORD, 2,220 flights
These figures cover 815 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.5% 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 TYS to ORD
SkyWest flew 815 of the 2,220 flights on TYS to ORD, about 37% of it. Its 66.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.4% to PSA at 60.6%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 317 | 86.4% | 85 min | 2.52% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 175 | 75.9% | 57 min | 1.71% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 79 | 70.9% | 84 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 815 | 66.7% | 110 min | 2.94% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 834 | 60.6% | 113 min | 6.47% | 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 20 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–8am15 flights—
- 8am–11am150 flights74.7%
- 11am–2pm227 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm141 flights64.4%
- 5pm–8pm238 flights54.5%
- 8pm–5am44 flights71.1%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 74.7% for the 8am–11am 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 238 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on TYS to ORD through the year
June is the worst month at 62.5% on time, 15 points below May, the best at 77.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 72.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.0%. 11 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 43% of the 29,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,747 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.94%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 15.5% 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 475 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.6% on time across 815 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 815 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 TYS to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.94% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 783 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TYS to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to TYS, the return leg
- United Airlines on TYS to ORD86.4%
- Envoy Air on TYS to ORD75.9%
- PSA Airlines on TYS to ORD60.6%
- 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.