Carrier route record
YXEWR→ORF
Republic Airways · Newark to Norfolk
- Flights
- 543
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 71%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on EWR to ORF 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 543 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Republic's EWR to ORF record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 515 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on EWR to ORF, 764 flights
These figures cover 543 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 EWR to ORF
Republic flew 543 of the 764 flights on EWR to ORF, most of the route. Its 83.1% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.1% to United at 64.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 543 | 83.1% | 58 min | 4.97% | B− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 221 | 64.5% | 59 min | 3.17% | D− |
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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am217 flights85.6%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm109 flights82.5%
- 5pm–8pm74 flights74.6%
- 8pm–5am142 flights83.7%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.6% of the time, against 74.6% for the evening window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 217 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on EWR to ORF through the year
- Jul–Sep 202542 flights62.9%
- Oct–Dec 2025146 flights79.0%
- Jan–Mar 2026116 flights87.0%
- Apr–Jun 2026239 flights86.8%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 83.1% on time across 543 flights.
Republic on EWR to ORF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 87.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 62.9%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 136 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%. 9 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 5,066 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
40% 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 5,066 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 5,066 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 1,903 minutes out of 5,066, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.97%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
5.0% 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 284 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.8% on time across 542 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 543 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 EWR to ORF
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.97% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 515 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.