Carrier route record
YXORD→CLE
Republic Airways · Chicago to Cleveland
- Flights
- 540
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on ORD to CLE sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 540 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 814 at 72.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on ORD to CLE from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 509 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on ORD to CLE, 4,899 flights
These figures cover 540 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CLE
Republic flew 540 of the 4,899 flights on ORD to CLE, about 11% of it. Its 74.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 74.5% to American at 56.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 72.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 56.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 422 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 540 | 74.5% | 70 min | 5.56% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 814 | 72.7% | 60 min | 4.18% | C− |
| United Airlines | 2,175 | 72.3% | 72 min | 1.29% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 948 | 66.2% | 86 min | 3.48% | C− |
| American Airlines | 422 | 56.4% | 100 min | 4.98% | D− |
American 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 29 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am41 flights82.5%
- 8am–11am38 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm130 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm146 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm46 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am139 flights71.3%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 89.5% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 146 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to CLE through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 63.6%. June is the strongest month at 90.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. January was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.5%. 12 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 55% of the 9,054 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
55% 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 9,054 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 9,054 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 89.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.56%, 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. 9.8% 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 316 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 runs 76.6% on time across 543 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. 540 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 CLE
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.56% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 509 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CLE, every carrier
- Republic on CLE to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to CLE72.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to CLE72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CLE66.2%
- American Airlines on ORD to CLE56.4%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.