Carrier route record
YXORD→DCA
Republic Airways · Chicago to Washington
- Flights
- 1,055
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- 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 DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,055 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,393 at 70.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on ORD to DCA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 91 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,000 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.1%
Every carrier on ORD to DCA, 6,987 flights
These figures cover 1,055 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 DCA
Republic flew 1,055 of the 6,987 flights on ORD to DCA, about 15% of it. Its 68.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.5% to SkyWest at 61.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 171 | 83.5% | 47 min | 2.34% | B |
| United Airlines | 3,393 | 70.6% | 75 min | 1.80% | C |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 1,055 | 68.5% | 74 min | 4.55% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,299 | 66.3% | 95 min | 4.18% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 61.5% | 93 min | 5.80% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 4.2% 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 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am41 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am364 flights72.0%
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm112 flights69.2%
- 5pm–8pm382 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am154 flights67.4%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.1% on time, against 87.2% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 382 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to DCA through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 64.3%. June is the strongest month at 87.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. January was the busiest month here, with 176 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.1% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 62.5%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,363 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 4.55%, 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. 12.0% 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 612 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.3% on time across 1,059 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,055 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 DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.55% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,000 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DCA, every carrier
- Republic on DCA to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to DCA83.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to DCA70.6%
- American Airlines on ORD to DCA66.3%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.