Carrier route record
YXCVG→ORD
Republic Airways · Cincinnati to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,346
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on CVG to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,346 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,338 at 72.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on CVG to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,298 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on CVG to ORD, 4,630 flights
These figures cover 1,346 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 CVG to ORD
Republic flew 1,346 of the 4,630 flights on CVG to ORD, about 29% of it. Its 77.8% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.8% to American at 41.8%. 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 72.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 58.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 895 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 1,346 | 77.8% | 80 min | 3.49% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,338 | 72.8% | 72 min | 2.54% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 70.6% | 133 min | 8.11% | C− |
| United Airlines | 946 | 68.5% | 74 min | 2.43% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 895 | 58.6% | 114 min | 5.70% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 41.8% | 75 min | 1.47% | F |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.7% 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 CVG 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 44 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am49 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am207 flights75.6%
- 11am–2pm503 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm355 flights77.8%
- 5pm–8pm184 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am48 flights52.3%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.3% on time, against 95.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 503 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on CVG to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 60.6% on time, against 88.1% in September. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 178 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.6%. 11 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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
37% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 23,038 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 9,335 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.49%, 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. 9.0% 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 264 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 79.3% on time across 1,368 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,346 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 CVG to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.49% 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. 1,298 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to CVG, the return leg
- Envoy Air on CVG to ORD72.8%
- United Airlines on CVG to ORD68.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on CVG to ORD58.6%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.