Carrier route record
YXORD→DCA
Republic Airways · Chicago to Washington
- Flights
- 1,150
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 4.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,150 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,411 at 70.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Republic on ORD to DCA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 75 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,092 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.43%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.0%
Every carrier on ORD to DCA, 7,104 flights
These figures cover 1,150 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on ORD to DCA
Republic flew 1,150 of the 7,104 flights on ORD to DCA, about 16% of it. Its 69.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.0%. 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 57.1%. 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 | 3,411 | 70.1% | 74 min | 2.14% | C |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 1,150 | 69.8% | 73 min | 4.43% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,268 | 66.3% | 91 min | 3.62% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 57.1% | 106 min | 5.77% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 3.6% 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.
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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 22 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am102 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am398 flights73.1%
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm112 flights69.2%
- 5pm–8pm382 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am154 flights67.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.1% on time, against 84.7% 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 398 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 83.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 64.1%, a spread of 20 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Republic on ORD to DCA runs when it is late
Republic on ORD to DCA often beats the schedule: 313 of 1,092 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 330 late arrivals split 102 under half an hour, 103 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 125 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early313 flights28.7%
- Within 15 min449 flights41.1%
- 15–29 min late102 flights9.3%
- 30–59 min late103 flights9.4%
- 1–2 hours late66 flights6.0%
- 2+ hours late59 flights5.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,092 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
50 of 286 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 94 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for Republic on ORD to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 February 2026, 11 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 February 2026 | 11 hours 12 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 14 April 2026 | 11 hours 7 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 June 2026 | 10 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 January 2026 | 8 hours 35 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 12 December 2025 | 5 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 22%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 24,230 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.43%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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
11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.6% on time across 1,155 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,150 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Republic on ORD to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.43% 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. 1,092 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 DCA70.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to DCA66.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DCA57.1%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.