Carrier route record

YXATL→ORD

Republic Airways · Atlanta to Chicago

Flights: 287
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 9

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

Republic on ATL 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 287 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,611 at 74.3% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 74.3% on time across 1,611 flights.

On time

72.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 268 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.92%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.6%

Every carrier on ATL to ORD, 6,406 flights

These figures cover 287 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

Republic against every carrier on ATL to ORD

Republic flew 287 of the 6,406 flights on ATL to ORD, about 4% of it. Its 72.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of nine carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to Frontier at 62.8%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 74.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 62.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 711 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
PSA Airlinesthin sample	5	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	40	84.2%	88 min	5.00%	B−
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	75	83.8%	38 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	1,611	74.3%	92 min	1.55%	C
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	287	72.4%	65 min	5.92%	C−
American Airlines	688	72.2%	98 min	3.05%	C−
Envoy Airthin sample	364	71.3%	83 min	2.20%	C
Delta Air Lines	2,625	69.1%	63 min	2.21%	C
Frontier Airlines	711	62.8%	111 min	2.67%	D

American Airlines cancels 3.0% 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 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 22 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am56 flights85.2%
8am–11am10 flights—
11am–2pm27 flights—
2pm–5pm4 flights—
5pm–8pm88 flights67.1%
8pm–5am102 flights63.7%

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

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.7% on time, against 85.2% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 102 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on ATL to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025101 flights76.5%
Oct–Dec 202573 flights70.6%
Jan–Mar 202659 flights65.5%
Apr–Jun 202654 flights74.5%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 72.4% on time across 287 flights.

Republic on ATL to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 65.5%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 72 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 88.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.9%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 4,810 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
55%
National Airspace System
22%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
2%

55% 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 4,810 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 4,810 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 85.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.92%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 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 606 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 72.1% on time across 287 flights, within half a point 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. 287 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 ATL to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.92% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 268 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