Carrier route record
YXJFK→ORD
Republic Airways · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 830
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on JFK to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.8% 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 830 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 542 at 73.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Republic on JFK 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
76.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 776 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.4%
Every carrier on JFK to ORD, 2,136 flights
These figures cover 830 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 JFK to ORD
Republic flew 830 of the 2,136 flights on JFK to ORD, about 39% of it. Its 76.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.3% to Frontier at 51.4%. Two 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 73.1% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 634 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 830 | 76.3% | 77 min | 5.78% | B− |
| American Airlines | 542 | 73.1% | 91 min | 5.17% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 634 | 64.0% | 85 min | 7.57% | D− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 14 | 61.5% | 266 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 51.4% | 101 min | 4.31% | F− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 7.6% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 18 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am48 flights81.2%
- 8am–11am180 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm154 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm182 flights77.3%
- 5pm–8pm262 flights65.5%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.9% of the time, against 65.5% for the evening window. That is 18 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 262 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on JFK to ORD through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 60.0%. June is the strongest month at 87.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. July was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.7%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Republic on JFK to ORD runs when it is late
Republic on JFK to ORD often beats the schedule: 268 of 776 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 184 late arrivals split 50 under half an hour, 61 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 73 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early268 flights34.5%
- Within 15 min324 flights41.8%
- 15–29 min late50 flights6.4%
- 30–59 min late61 flights7.9%
- 1–2 hours late41 flights5.3%
- 2+ hours late32 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 776 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
37 of 168 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 53 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 JFK to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 April 2026, 10 hours 53 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 April 2026 | 10 hours 53 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 July 2026 | 7 hours 21 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 11 June 2026 | 4 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 4 hours 40 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 March 2026 | 4 hours 36 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 14,162 reported delay minutes.
48% 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 6,744 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.78%, 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
9.4% 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 740 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 runs 77.5% on time across 830 flights, within about 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. 830 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 JFK to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.78% 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. 776 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to JFK, the return leg
- American Airlines on JFK to ORD73.1%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to ORD64.0%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to ORD51.4%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) 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.