Carrier route record

YXCHA→ORD

Republic Airways · Chattanooga to Chicago

Flights: 238
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 3

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

Republic on CHA to ORD draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 238 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on CHA to ORD runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 229 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.36%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.2%

Every carrier on CHA to ORD, 953 flights

These figures cover 238 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 CHA to ORD

Republic flew 238 of the 953 flights on CHA to ORD, about 25% of it. Its 66.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.4% to Republic at 66.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on CHA to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	205	75.4%	58 min	2.44%	B
SkyWest Airlines	510	69.7%	85 min	5.10%	C−
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	238	66.8%	63 min	3.36%	C−

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 31 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–8am74 flights83.3%
8am–11am40 flights78.4%
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm122 flights52.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.5% on time, against 83.3% 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 122 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on CHA to ORD through the year

Oct–Dec 2025147 flights67.1%
Jan–Mar 202676 flights60.6%
Apr–Jun 202615 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 66.8% on time across 238 flights.

Split by quarter, Republic on CHA to ORD logged 147 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 76 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 15 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 66.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 46.2%. 34 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 4,775 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,775 reported delay minutes.

36% 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 1,717 minutes out of 4,775, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.36%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.9% 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 501 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 66.7% on time across 239 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. 238 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 CHA to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.36% 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. 229 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