Carrier route record

YXEYW→ORD

Republic Airways · Key West to Chicago

Flights: 172
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 24%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.

Republic on EYW to ORD lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 172 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on EYW to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 160 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.74%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.4%

Every carrier on EYW to ORD, 717 flights

These figures cover 172 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 EYW to ORD

Republic flew 172 of the 717 flights on EYW to ORD, about 24% of it. Its 79.4% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 79.4% to United at 54.5%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on EYW to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	172	79.4%	81 min	1.74%	B
Envoy Air	407	67.0%	90 min	1.23%	C
United Airlinesthin sample	138	54.5%	105 min	1.45%	F

Departure window

When Republic runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 172 flights.

5am–8am33 flights83.9%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm23 flights—
2pm–5pm115 flights74.5%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.9% of the time, against 74.5% for the afternoon window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 115 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on EYW to ORD through the year

Oct–Dec 202567 flights66.7%
Jan–Mar 202638 flights86.1%
Apr–Jun 202667 flights88.5%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. 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 79.4% on time across 172 flights.

Republic on EYW to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 88.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.7%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 57 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.

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 2,686 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
23%
Extreme weather
1%

38% 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 2,686 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 2,686 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 1,039 minutes out of 2,686, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.74% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 5.23%.

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. 9.4% 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 1,251 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 runs 79.6% on time across 172 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 172 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 EYW to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 172 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 79.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 160 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures