Carrier route record
YXORD→MCI
Republic Airways · Chicago to Kansas City
- Flights
- 567
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- 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 MCI 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 567 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 820 at 74.2% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on ORD to MCI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 557 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.9%
Every carrier on ORD to MCI, 4,146 flights
These figures cover 567 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on ORD to MCI
Republic flew 567 of the 4,146 flights on ORD to MCI, about 14% of it. Its 77.2% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.2% to American at 58.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 74.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 945 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 567 | 77.2% | 66 min | 1.59% | B |
| Envoy Air | 820 | 74.2% | 60 min | 3.41% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,435 | 71.6% | 71 min | 1.46% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 945 | 67.9% | 87 min | 3.81% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 59.0% | 56 min | 2.50% | D |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 339 | 58.8% | 90 min | 2.65% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.8% 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 18 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am15 flights—
- 8am–11am110 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm93 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm196 flights81.3%
- 5pm–8pm68 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am85 flights65.0%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.2% on time, against 81.7% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 196 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to MCI through the year
July is the worst month at 54.5% on time, 33 points below April, the best at 87.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 98 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.7%. 17 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 8,328 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
- 26%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 4%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 8,328 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 8,328 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 81.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 403 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.8% on time across 570 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 567 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 MCI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 567 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 77.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 557 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MCI, every carrier
- Republic on MCI to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to MCI74.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MCI71.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MCI67.9%
- American Airlines on ORD to MCI58.8%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.