Carrier route record

YXALB→ORD

Republic Airways · Albany to Chicago

Flights: 587
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.

Republic on ALB to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 587 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 756 at 81.1% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on ALB to ORD runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 557 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.6%

Every carrier on ALB to ORD, 2,303 flights

These figures cover 587 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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

Republic against every carrier on ALB to ORD

Republic flew 587 of the 2,303 flights on ALB to ORD, about 25% of it. Its 71.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 81.1% to Republic at 71.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ALB to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	756	81.1%	83 min	2.12%	B
United Airlines	756	76.4%	95 min	1.85%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	204	73.9%	82 min	2.45%	C
Republic Airways (this page)	587	71.8%	75 min	4.43%	C−

No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 81.1%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Republic 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 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am128 flights82.1%
8am–11am52 flights74.5%
11am–2pm101 flights80.0%
2pm–5pm94 flights68.1%
5pm–8pm212 flights62.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.4% on time, against 82.1% for the 5am–8am 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 212 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on ALB to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202548 flights63.0%
Oct–Dec 2025229 flights70.7%
Jan–Mar 2026231 flights71.4%
Apr–Jun 202679 flights81.6%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 71.8% on time across 587 flights.

Republic on ALB to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 63.0%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 147 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.4%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

40% 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 4,621 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,691 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.1% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.43%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 11.1% 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 723 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 runs 74.2% on time across 587 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 587 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 Republic on ALB to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.43% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 557 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures