Carrier route record
YXORD→GRR
Republic Airways · Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 661
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on ORD to GRR 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 661 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 929 at 76.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 929 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 639 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.03%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.0%
Every carrier on ORD to GRR, 4,034 flights
These figures cover 661 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 GRR
Republic flew 661 of the 4,034 flights on ORD to GRR, about 16% of it. Its 74.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 76.1% to PSA at 0.0%. One 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 76.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 531 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 929 | 76.1% | 63 min | 3.88% | B− |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 661 | 74.5% | 71 min | 3.03% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 838 | 70.8% | 89 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,073 | 66.9% | 78 min | 1.21% | C |
| American Airlines | 531 | 58.7% | 85 min | 3.39% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 640 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.9% 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 21 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am353 flights79.0%
- 11am–2pm32 flights—
- 2pm–5pm73 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm92 flights64.6%
- 8pm–5am111 flights60.6%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 81.7% for the 2pm–5pm 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 353 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to GRR through the year
December is the weak month at 48.9% on time, against 94.2% in September. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 96 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Monday 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 12,000 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
- 27%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 3%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 12,000 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 11,614 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.03%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 10.2% 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 137 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.9% on time across 661 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. 661 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 GRR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.03% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 639 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to GRR, every carrier
- Republic on GRR to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to GRR76.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to GRR70.8%
- United Airlines on ORD to GRR66.9%
- American Airlines on ORD to GRR58.7%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- 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.