Carrier route record
YXORD→MSP
Republic Airways · Chicago to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 533
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on ORD to MSP sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 533 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,084 at 74.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 74.2% on time across 1,084 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 500 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on ORD to MSP, 6,324 flights
These figures cover 533 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 MSP
Republic flew 533 of the 6,324 flights on ORD to MSP, about 8% of it. Its 72.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 74.2% to Frontier at 50.0%. Three 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 67.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 702 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,084 | 74.2% | 66 min | 2.77% | C |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 533 | 72.0% | 75 min | 6.19% | C− |
| United Airlines | 2,401 | 69.5% | 70 min | 1.04% | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,411 | 69.0% | 96 min | 1.98% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 68.3% | 81 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 702 | 67.1% | 99 min | 3.42% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 137 | 51.1% | 118 min | 0.73% | F+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 50.0% | 52 min | 7.69% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.4% 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 27 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am91 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am86 flights78.8%
- 11am–2pm22 flights—
- 2pm–5pm144 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm58 flights62.7%
- 8pm–5am132 flights64.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.7% on time, against 89.8% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 144 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 41.9% on time, against 84.4% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 70 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 65.1%. 12 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 50% of the 11,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Extreme weather
- 17%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,502 reported delay minutes.
50% 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 11,000 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 6.19%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 10.8% 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 334 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 76.1% on time across 532 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 533 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 MSP
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.19% 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. 500 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSP, every carrier
- Republic on MSP to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSP74.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSP69.5%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to MSP69.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSP67.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSP51.1%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.