Carrier route record

YXORD→MEM

Republic Airways · Chicago to Memphis

Flights: 465
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
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 MEM sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 465 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 822 at 78.6% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on ORD to MEM runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 69 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 440 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.8%

Every carrier on ORD to MEM, 2,468 flights

These figures cover 465 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 MEM

Republic flew 465 of the 2,468 flights on ORD to MEM, about 19% of it. Its 70.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.6% to American at 37.5%. 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 78.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 832 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to MEM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	822	78.6%	55 min	3.16%	B−
SkyWest Airlines	832	71.8%	67 min	1.44%	C
Republic Airways (this page)	465	70.7%	74 min	5.38%	C−
United Airlinesthin sample	333	65.4%	72 min	3.60%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	16	37.5%	66 min	0.00%	F+

Envoy Air cancels 3.2% 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 15 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am108 flights75.7%
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm170 flights74.8%
5pm–8pm11 flights—
8pm–5am174 flights61.1%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.1% on time, against 75.7% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 174 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on ORD to MEM through the year

Jul–Sep 202559 flights75.4%
Oct–Dec 202560 flights57.9%
Jan–Mar 2026177 flights67.9%
Apr–Jun 2026169 flights76.4%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.7% on time across 465 flights.

Republic on ORD to MEM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.9%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 116 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 60.0%. 26 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 9,485 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
23%
Carrier
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,485 reported delay minutes.

39% 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 9,485 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 5.38%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 13.6% 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 491 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 75.6% on time across 468 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. 465 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 MEM

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.38% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 440 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures