Carrier route record
YXCLE→ORD
Republic Airways · Cleveland to Chicago
- Flights
- 543
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on CLE to ORD lands a B−, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 543 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,173 at 77.0% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.0% on time across 2,173 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 505 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.6%
Every carrier on CLE to ORD, 4,897 flights
These figures cover 543 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 CLE to ORD
Republic flew 543 of the 4,897 flights on CLE to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 76.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.0% to SkyWest at 68.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.0% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 947 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,173 | 77.0% | 75 min | 1.47% | B |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 543 | 76.6% | 73 min | 6.63% | B− |
| American Airlines | 420 | 74.1% | 118 min | 5.00% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 814 | 73.7% | 73 min | 4.55% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 947 | 68.5% | 104 min | 4.44% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 5.0% 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 15 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am139 flights82.8%
- 8am–11am39 flights76.3%
- 11am–2pm13 flights—
- 2pm–5pm155 flights78.5%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am80 flights68.1%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 82.8% of the time, against 68.1% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 155 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on CLE to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202514 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025157 flights77.4%
- Jan–Mar 2026244 flights75.8%
- Apr–Jun 2026128 flights77.2%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 76.6% on time across 543 flights.
Quarter by quarter Republic on CLE to ORD held fairly steady: 77.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 75.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 77.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 2 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.5%. 10 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 42% of the 8,620 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 8,620 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 8,620 reported delay minutes.
32% 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 2,792 minutes out of 8,620, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 6.63%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 9.5% 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 316 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 74.5% on time across 540 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. 543 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 CLE to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.63% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 505 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to CLE, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLE to ORD77.0%
- American Airlines on CLE to ORD74.1%
- Envoy Air on CLE to ORD73.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on CLE to ORD68.5%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- 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.