Carrier route record

YXBWI→ORD

Republic Airways · Baltimore to Chicago

Flights: 274
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 8

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

Republic on BWI to ORD lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 274 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,148 at 75.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Republic's BWI to ORD record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 265 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.92%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.9%

Every carrier on BWI to ORD, 2,690 flights

These figures cover 274 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Republic against every carrier on BWI to ORD

Republic flew 274 of the 2,690 flights on BWI to ORD, about 10% of it. Its 83.0% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 85.4% to American at 38.5%. Five of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 BWI to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	124	85.4%	50 min	0.81%	A+
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	274	83.0%	88 min	2.92%	B
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	23	82.6%	96 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	1,148	75.1%	88 min	1.31%	B
Envoy Air	903	74.7%	85 min	3.77%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	150	64.3%	177 min	4.00%	D−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	42	43.9%	158 min	2.38%	F
American Airlinesthin sample	26	38.5%	81 min	0.00%	F+

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 27 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–8am150 flights89.0%
8am–11am10 flights—
11am–2pm59 flights83.1%
2pm–5pm14 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am41 flights62.2%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.2% on time, against 89.0% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 150 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on BWI to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 20257 flights—
Oct–Dec 202516 flights—
Jan–Mar 202681 flights87.2%
Apr–Jun 2026170 flights82.3%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 83.0% on time across 274 flights.

Split by quarter, Republic on BWI to ORD logged 7 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 16 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 81 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 170 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.0% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.3%. 12 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 45% of the 3,955 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
45%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
6%

45% 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 3,955 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 3,955 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 89.0% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.92%, 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

6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 622 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.5% on time across 274 flights, 13 points below 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 274 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 BWI to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.92% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 265 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