Carrier route record
YXORD→JFK
Republic Airways · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 759
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- 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 JFK lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 759 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 571 at 81.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on ORD to JFK from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 742 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.4%
Every carrier on ORD to JFK, 2,012 flights
These figures cover 759 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 JFK
Republic flew 759 of the 2,012 flights on ORD to JFK, about 38% of it. Its 77.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 92.3% to Frontier at 59.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 81.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 61.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 551 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 14 | 92.3% | 221 min | 7.14% | A− |
| JetBlue Airways | 571 | 81.8% | 103 min | 4.38% | B− |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 759 | 77.1% | 77 min | 2.11% | B |
| American Airlines | 551 | 61.7% | 99 min | 5.08% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 117 | 59.8% | 100 min | 4.27% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 5.1% 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 45 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am277 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am217 flights79.1%
- 11am–2pm176 flights71.8%
- 2pm–5pm33 flights65.6%
- 5pm–8pm56 flights42.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.9% on time, against 87.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 277 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to JFK through the year
December is the weak month at 67.2% on time, against 93.9% in May. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.0%. 11 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,084 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,540 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
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. 9.0% 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 740 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 runs 76.8% on time across 759 flights, within half a point 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. 759 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 JFK
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 759 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 742 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to JFK, every carrier
- Republic on JFK to ORD, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on ORD to JFK81.8%
- American Airlines on ORD to JFK61.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to JFK59.8%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.