Carrier route record
YXJFK→ORD
Republic Airways · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 759
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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: 5.5% 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 759 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 552 at 73.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 714 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.5%
Every carrier on JFK to ORD, 2,013 flights
These figures cover 759 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 JFK to ORD
Republic flew 759 of the 2,013 flights on JFK to ORD, about 38% of it. Its 76.8% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.8% to Frontier at 51.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 759 | 76.8% | 83 min | 5.53% | B− |
| American Airlines | 552 | 73.0% | 89 min | 5.07% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 572 | 67.7% | 82 min | 3.85% | C− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 14 | 61.5% | 266 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 51.4% | 101 min | 4.31% | F− |
American Airlines cancels 5.1% 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 22 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am74 flights83.3%
- 8am–11am56 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm155 flights82.3%
- 2pm–5pm208 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm262 flights67.8%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.3% of the time, against 67.8% for the evening window. That is 22 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. September was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 70.9%. 13 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 51% 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.
- 51%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
51% 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 6,971 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,733 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.53%, 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. 9.5% 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 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. 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 77.1% on time across 759 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. 759 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 5.53% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 714 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 ORD73.0%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to ORD67.7%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.