Carrier route record
YXDCA→ORD
Republic Airways · Washington to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,155
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on DCA to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,155 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,411 at 73.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Republic on DCA 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
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,080 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.06%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.8%
Every carrier on DCA to ORD, 7,112 flights
These figures cover 1,155 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on DCA to ORD
Republic flew 1,155 of the 7,112 flights on DCA to ORD, about 16% of it. Its 75.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.9% to SkyWest at 60.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 171 | 80.9% | 81 min | 4.68% | B− |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 1,155 | 75.6% | 75 min | 6.06% | B− |
| United Airlines | 3,411 | 73.8% | 87 min | 2.52% | C |
| American Airlines | 2,271 | 72.9% | 89 min | 3.61% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 60.4% | 93 min | 6.73% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 3.6% 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.
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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 about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am87 flights75.6%
- 8am–11am145 flights84.6%
- 11am–2pm160 flights74.8%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm391 flights69.3%
- 8pm–5am215 flights76.3%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.6% of the time, against 69.3% for the evening 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 391 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on DCA to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 68.1% on time, against 83.6% in July. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 177 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Republic on DCA to ORD runs when it is late
Republic on DCA to ORD often beats the schedule: 374 of 1,080 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 264 late arrivals split 85 under half an hour, 76 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 103 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early374 flights34.6%
- Within 15 min442 flights40.9%
- 15–29 min late85 flights7.9%
- 30–59 min late76 flights7.0%
- 1–2 hours late55 flights5.1%
- 2+ hours late48 flights4.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,080 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
43 of 232 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 75 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for Republic on DCA to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 April 2026, 10 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Four of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 April 2026 | 10 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 March 2026 | 7 hours 42 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 March 2026 | 6 hours 56 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 March 2026 | 6 hours 14 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 March 2026 | 6 hours 8 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 19,846 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 7,460 minutes out of 20,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 6.06%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 612 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.8% on time across 1,150 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,155 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 DCA to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.06% 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. 1,080 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to DCA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DCA to ORD80.9%
- United Airlines on DCA to ORD73.8%
- American Airlines on DCA to ORD72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on DCA to ORD60.4%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.