Carrier route record
YXGRR→ORD
Republic Airways · Grand Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 661
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on GRR to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 661 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 532 at 75.6% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.6% on time across 532 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 642 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.3%
Every carrier on GRR to ORD, 4,038 flights
These figures cover 661 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 GRR to ORD
Republic flew 661 of the 4,038 flights on GRR to ORD, about 16% of it. Its 70.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.6% to PSA at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 837 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 532 | 75.6% | 133 min | 3.38% | B− |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 661 | 70.9% | 76 min | 2.87% | C |
| Envoy Air | 931 | 69.5% | 67 min | 3.65% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,075 | 65.1% | 73 min | 1.30% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 837 | 64.5% | 105 min | 3.23% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 690 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air 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.
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 28 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am139 flights81.8%
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm352 flights69.1%
- 2pm–5pm60 flights75.4%
- 5pm–8pm45 flights53.7%
- 8pm–5am57 flights66.7%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.7% on time, against 81.8% 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 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on GRR to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 48.4% on time, 33 points below February, the best at 81.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
35% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 14,247 reported delay minutes.
45% 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 6,371 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.87%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 10.7% 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.
At 137 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 661 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 661 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 GRR to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.87% 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. 642 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- GRR to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to GRR, the return leg
- American Airlines on GRR to ORD75.6%
- Envoy Air on GRR to ORD69.5%
- United Airlines on GRR to ORD65.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on GRR to ORD64.5%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- 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.