Carrier route record
YXCMH→ORD
Republic Airways · Columbus to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,512
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on CMH 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,512 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,399 at 74.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Republic's CMH 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.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,477 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on CMH to ORD, 4,841 flights
These figures cover 1,512 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 CMH to ORD
Republic flew 1,512 of the 4,841 flights on CMH to ORD, about 31% of it. Its 83.6% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 85.6% to SkyWest at 64.5%. Two 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 74.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 535 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 85.6% | 95 min | 2.34% | A |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 1,512 | 83.6% | 68 min | 2.18% | B |
| Envoy Air | 1,399 | 74.8% | 100 min | 2.07% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 69.8% | 75 min | 1.85% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,213 | 66.3% | 85 min | 1.81% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 535 | 64.5% | 105 min | 5.79% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.8% 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.
Flight by flight
Republic flight numbers on CMH to ORD
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 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am524 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am426 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm128 flights84.0%
- 2pm–5pm234 flights76.0%
- 5pm–8pm100 flights71.1%
- 8pm–5am100 flights74.2%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 71.1% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 524 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on CMH to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 68.9% on time, against 93.7% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 169 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.9%. 8 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 6,850 minutes out of 16,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 16,415 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 91.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 296 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.6% on time across 1,507 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,512 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Republic on CMH to ORD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 93.7% on time and December 68.9%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,477 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to CMH, the return leg
- American Airlines on CMH to ORD85.6%
- Envoy Air on CMH to ORD74.8%
- United Airlines on CMH to ORD66.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on CMH to ORD64.5%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.