Carrier route record
YXBDL→ORD
Republic Airways · Hartford to Chicago
- Flights
- 644
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on BDL to ORD lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 644 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 461 at 73.2% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on BDL 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
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 616 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on BDL to ORD, 2,349 flights
These figures cover 644 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 BDL to ORD
Republic flew 644 of the 2,349 flights on BDL to ORD, about 27% of it. Its 78.2% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.3% to SkyWest at 70.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 141 | 78.3% | 60 min | 2.13% | B |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 644 | 78.2% | 69 min | 3.88% | B− |
| American Airlines | 461 | 73.2% | 154 min | 3.25% | C− |
| United Airlines | 841 | 71.5% | 78 min | 1.55% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 262 | 70.6% | 71 min | 2.29% | C |
American Airlines cancels 3.3% 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 21 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am94 flights82.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm341 flights83.7%
- 2pm–5pm80 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm129 flights62.5%
- 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: 62.5% on time, against 83.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 341 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on BDL to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 63.2% on time, against 90.7% in August. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. November was the busiest month here, with 115 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.1%. 9 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 9,259 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 9,259 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 9,259 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.88%, 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. 9.1% 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 783 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 80.5% on time across 644 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. 644 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 BDL to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.88% 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. 616 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to BDL, the return leg
- Envoy Air on BDL to ORD78.3%
- American Airlines on BDL to ORD73.2%
- United Airlines on BDL to ORD71.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on BDL to ORD70.6%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.