Carrier route record

YXLGA→ORD

Republic Airways · New York to Chicago

Flights: 1,298
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 6

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

Republic on LGA to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 9.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,298 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,296 at 68.6% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 68.6% on time across 2,296 flights.

On time

68.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,172 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

9.32%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.3%

Every carrier on LGA to ORD, 11,625 flights

These figures cover 1,298 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 LGA to ORD

Republic flew 1,298 of the 11,625 flights on LGA to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 68.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 68.6% to SkyWest at 61.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LGA to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,296	68.6%	96 min	4.75%	C−
Republic Airways (this page)	1,298	68.6%	62 min	9.32%	C−
American Airlines	2,947	67.5%	94 min	4.48%	C−
United Airlines	4,662	66.7%	88 min	3.69%	C−
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	330	62.1%	95 min	7.27%	D−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	92	61.8%	90 min	17.39%	D−

Delta Air Lines cancels 4.8% 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 13 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am88 flights75.6%
8am–11am281 flights71.4%
11am–2pm192 flights72.9%
2pm–5pm261 flights69.6%
5pm–8pm332 flights62.8%
8pm–5am144 flights64.1%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.8% on time, against 75.6% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 332 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on LGA to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202533 flights84.8%
Oct–Dec 2025197 flights55.7%
Jan–Mar 2026976 flights71.1%
Apr–Jun 202692 flights64.7%

Scale runs 45% 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 68.6% on time across 1,298 flights.

Republic on LGA to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 84.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 55.7%, a swing of 29 points on roughly 325 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 73.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.2%. 12 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 23,000 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 22,652 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 8,696 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 9.32%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in ten 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. 10.5% 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 733 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 71.0% on time across 1,297 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 1,298 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Republic on LGA to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 9.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,172 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