Carrier route record
YXDCA→ORD
Republic Airways · Washington to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,059
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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: 5.6% 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 1,059 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,301 at 74.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 996 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on DCA to ORD, 6,992 flights
These figures cover 1,059 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 DCA to ORD
Republic flew 1,059 of the 6,992 flights on DCA to ORD, about 15% of it. Its 75.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.3%. 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 66.2%. 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) | 1,059 | 75.3% | 76 min | 5.57% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,301 | 74.7% | 91 min | 4.00% | C− |
| United Airlines | 3,392 | 73.6% | 89 min | 2.21% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 66.2% | 97 min | 5.80% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 4.0% 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 14 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am86 flights75.3%
- 8am–11am111 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm160 flights74.8%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm391 flights69.3%
- 8pm–5am154 flights78.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.5% of the time, against 69.3% for the evening window. That is 14 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 82.9% in April. 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 81.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.0%. 13 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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 7%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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 18,658 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 7,292 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.57%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 9.7% 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.
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. 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 68.5% on time across 1,055 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,059 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 DCA to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.57% 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. 996 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%
- American Airlines on DCA to ORD74.7%
- United Airlines on DCA to ORD73.6%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.