Carrier route record
YXMSP→ORD
Republic Airways · Minneapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 532
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on MSP 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 532 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,084 at 74.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on MSP 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
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 497 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.9%
Every carrier on MSP to ORD, 6,324 flights
These figures cover 532 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 MSP to ORD
Republic flew 532 of the 6,324 flights on MSP to ORD, about 8% of it. Its 76.1% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.1% to Frontier at 41.7%. Three 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 74.0% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,412 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 532 | 76.1% | 87 min | 6.58% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,084 | 74.0% | 72 min | 2.86% | C |
| United Airlines | 2,398 | 69.7% | 84 min | 1.38% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 704 | 67.6% | 93 min | 3.41% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,412 | 67.3% | 66 min | 1.84% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 138 | 65.0% | 128 min | 0.72% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 54.8% | 79 min | 2.33% | F |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 41.7% | 85 min | 7.69% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.4% 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 17 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am182 flights77.8%
- 8am–11am135 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm52 flights73.1%
- 2pm–5pm23 flights—
- 5pm–8pm140 flights68.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.4% of the time, against 68.3% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 182 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on MSP to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 50.0% on time, against 85.2% in July. 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 70 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 68.1%. 18 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 47% of the 10,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
47% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 10,384 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 85.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.58%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.5% 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 334 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.0% on time across 533 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 532 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 MSP to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.58% 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. 497 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to MSP, the return leg
- Envoy Air on MSP to ORD74.0%
- United Airlines on MSP to ORD69.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to ORD67.6%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to ORD67.3%
- American Airlines on MSP to ORD65.0%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.