Carrier route record
YXMSN→ORD
Republic Airways · Madison to Chicago
- Flights
- 650
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on MSN to ORD lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 650 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,067 at 78.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.1% on time across 1,067 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 634 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.9%
Every carrier on MSN to ORD, 4,030 flights
These figures cover 650 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 MSN to ORD
Republic flew 650 of the 4,030 flights on MSN to ORD, about 16% of it. Its 76.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.1% to PSA at 33.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 78.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,268 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,067 | 78.1% | 72 min | 3.84% | B− |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 650 | 76.0% | 74 min | 2.46% | B |
| United Airlines | 937 | 72.6% | 71 min | 2.35% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,268 | 66.8% | 109 min | 4.97% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 108 | 33.7% | 165 min | 12.04% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.0% 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 21 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am76 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am233 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm72 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm215 flights72.5%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights64.0%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.0% on time, against 85.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 233 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on MSN to ORD through the year
January is the weak month at 64.6% on time, against 94.4% in June. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 96 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.7%. 14 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 11,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
44% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 11,307 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.46% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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.
At 108 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 runs 78.4% on time across 651 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 650 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 MSN to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 650 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 76.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 634 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSN to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to MSN, the return leg
- Envoy Air on MSN to ORD78.1%
- United Airlines on MSN to ORD72.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSN to ORD66.8%
- PSA Airlines on MSN to ORD33.7%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.