Carrier route record

YXCLT→ORD

Republic Airways · Charlotte to Chicago

Flights: 372
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 5

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

Republic on CLT to ORD lands a B, 6 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 372 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 611 at 71.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Republic's CLT to ORD record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.2%

Every carrier on CLT to ORD, 4,300 flights

These figures cover 372 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 CLT to ORD

Republic flew 372 of the 4,300 flights on CLT to ORD, about 9% of it. Its 83.6% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.6% to Frontier at 62.4%. Two 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 CLT to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways (this page)	372	83.6%	80 min	2.96%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	160	81.6%	128 min	5.00%	B−
United Airlines	611	71.1%	87 min	2.13%	C
American Airlines	3,000	71.0%	72 min	2.87%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	157	62.4%	122 min	4.46%	D−

No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 71.1%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Republic runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 372 flights.

5am–8am58 flights81.8%
8am–11am221 flights86.0%
11am–2pm58 flights84.5%
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm26 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 86.0% on time for the 8am–11am window against 81.8% for 5am–8am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 221 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on CLT to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 20254 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025137 flights82.4%
Jan–Mar 2026108 flights77.5%
Apr–Jun 2026123 flights90.2%

Scale runs 70% 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 83.6% on time across 372 flights.

Republic on CLT to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 90.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 124 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.8%. 15 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. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 4,702 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.

National Airspace System
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
24%

45% 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 2,093 minutes out of 4,702, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,702 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.0% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.96%, 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

7.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 599 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 79.7% on time across 377 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 372 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 CLT to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 360 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