Carrier route record

YXMKE→ORD

Republic Airways · Milwaukee to Chicago

Flights: 113
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 2%
Carriers: 4

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

Republic on MKE to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 113 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on MKE to ORD runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 45 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 104 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.4%

Every carrier on MKE to ORD, 5,202 flights

These figures cover 113 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 MKE to ORD

Republic flew 113 of the 5,202 flights on MKE to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 73.1% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 73.1% to PSA at 54.5%. Two 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 MKE to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	113	73.1%	86 min	7.96%	C−
Envoy Airthin sample	130	69.7%	74 min	6.15%	C−
SkyWest Airlines	4,932	67.3%	94 min	4.12%	C−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	26	54.5%	176 min	15.38%	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 113 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Republic's MKE to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 73.1% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Republic on MKE to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 20258 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025103 flights74.7%
Jan–Mar 20261 flights—
Apr–Jun 20261 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 80%. 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 73.1% on time across 113 flights.

Split by quarter, Republic on MKE to ORD logged 8 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 103 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 1 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 1 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 73.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 2,414 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
National Airspace System
30%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
1%

56% 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 2,414 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 2,414 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 7.96%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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. 13.5% 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.

At 67 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 112 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 113 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 MKE to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 104 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