Carrier route record
YXORD→IND
Republic Airways · Chicago to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 2,716
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- 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 IND carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,716 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 576 at 80.3% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 80.3% on time across 576 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,623 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on ORD to IND, 5,206 flights
These figures cover 2,716 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 IND
Republic flew 2,716 of the 5,206 flights on ORD to IND, most of the route. Its 76.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.3% to American at 67.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 515 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 576 | 80.3% | 57 min | 1.39% | B |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 2,716 | 76.5% | 79 min | 3.35% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 649 | 69.5% | 79 min | 6.47% | C− |
| United Airlines | 750 | 69.4% | 71 min | 2.27% | C |
| American Airlines | 515 | 67.4% | 71 min | 6.02% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.5% 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.
Flight by flight
Republic flight numbers on ORD to IND
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 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am105 flights92.4%
- 8am–11am543 flights79.6%
- 11am–2pm324 flights79.4%
- 2pm–5pm402 flights81.1%
- 5pm–8pm682 flights71.1%
- 8pm–5am660 flights72.5%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 71.1% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 682 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to IND through the year
December is the weak month at 67.0% on time, against 86.5% 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 321 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.0%. 8 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 45% of the 49,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 48,562 reported delay minutes.
45% 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 49,000 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 3.35%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 9.3% 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 177 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.4% on time across 2,713 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 2,716 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 IND
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.35% 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. 2,623 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to IND, every carrier
- Republic on IND to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to IND80.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to IND69.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to IND69.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to IND67.4%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) 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.