Carrier route record
YXORD→ATL
Republic Airways · Chicago to Atlanta
- Flights
- 287
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 9
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on ORD to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 287 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,623 at 80.4% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 80.4% on time across 2,623 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 272 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.0%
Every carrier on ORD to ATL, 6,409 flights
These figures cover 287 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 ORD to ATL
Republic flew 287 of the 6,409 flights on ORD to ATL, about 4% of it. Its 72.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of nine carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.4% to Spirit at 60.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 80.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 689 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,623 | 80.4% | 87 min | 2.36% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 58 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 366 | 77.7% | 62 min | 2.19% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,611 | 74.7% | 68 min | 1.12% | C |
| Republic Airways (this page)thin sample | 287 | 72.1% | 63 min | 4.53% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 713 | 67.8% | 100 min | 3.09% | C− |
| American Airlines | 689 | 65.3% | 86 min | 3.05% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 61.5% | 93 min | 2.50% | D |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 75 | 60.0% | 74 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.1% 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 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 287 flights.
- 5am–8am28 flights—
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm39 flights69.4%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm28 flights—
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 70.3% on time. The full set of windows spans about a point.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to ATL through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025101 flights78.6%
- Oct–Dec 202574 flights67.1%
- Jan–Mar 202658 flights61.8%
- Apr–Jun 202654 flights77.6%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 72.1% on time across 287 flights.
Republic on ORD to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 61.8%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 72 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 58.5%. 25 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 58% of the 4,820 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
58% 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 4,820 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 4,820 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.53%, 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. 9.9% 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 606 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 72.4% on time across 287 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. 287 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 ORD to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.53% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 272 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to ATL, every carrier
- Republic on ATL to ORD, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to ATL80.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to ATL77.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to ATL74.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to ATL67.8%
- American Airlines on ORD to ATL65.3%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.