Carrier route record
YXBNA→ORD
Republic Airways · Nashville to Chicago
- Flights
- 562
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 9
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on BNA to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 562 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 782 at 73.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on BNA to ORD runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 42 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 548 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.4%
Every carrier on BNA to ORD, 5,024 flights
These figures cover 562 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 BNA to ORD
Republic flew 562 of the 5,024 flights on BNA to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 73.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of nine carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.7% to American at 65.5%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 73.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 384 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 338 | 76.7% | 59 min | 1.48% | B |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 562 | 73.4% | 80 min | 2.14% | C |
| Envoy Air | 782 | 73.0% | 75 min | 3.84% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,380 | 72.3% | 93 min | 2.10% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 81 | 67.9% | 82 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 27 | 66.7% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 30 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,467 | 65.9% | 102 min | 3.68% | C− |
| American Airlines | 384 | 65.5% | 120 min | 1.82% | C |
Envoy Air cancels 3.8% 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 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am32 flights71.9%
- 8am–11am122 flights77.5%
- 11am–2pm138 flights83.2%
- 2pm–5pm205 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm62 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 83.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 205 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on BNA to ORD through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 101 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.8%. 25 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.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 11,647 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.14% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
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. 9.3% 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 409 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.6% on time across 560 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 562 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 BNA to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 562 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 73.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 548 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to BNA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to ORD76.7%
- Envoy Air on BNA to ORD73.0%
- United Airlines on BNA to ORD72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on BNA to ORD65.9%
- American Airlines on BNA to ORD65.5%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- 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.