Carrier route record

YXORD→MSY

Republic Airways · Chicago to New Orleans

Flights: 335
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 7

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.

Republic on ORD to MSY lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five 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 335 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 466 at 83.8% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.8% on time across 466 flights.

On time

78.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 330 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.49%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.8%

Every carrier on ORD to MSY, 2,402 flights

These figures cover 335 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 MSY

Republic flew 335 of the 2,402 flights on ORD to MSY, about 14% of it. Its 78.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.8% to American at 62.6%. 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 83.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 62.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 401 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to MSY
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	466	83.8%	58 min	1.93%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	11	81.8%	123 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	131	79.1%	55 min	1.53%	B
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	335	78.2%	72 min	1.49%	B
United Airlines	842	75.1%	66 min	1.07%	B
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	216	67.5%	80 min	6.02%	C−
American Airlines	401	62.6%	90 min	2.24%	D

The spread between Envoy and American is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Republic runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 335 flights.

5am–8am17 flights—
8am–11am79 flights80.8%
11am–2pm156 flights78.6%
2pm–5pm7 flights—
5pm–8pm21 flights—
8pm–5am55 flights73.6%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 80.8% on time for the 8am–11am window against 73.6% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 156 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on ORD to MSY through the year

Jul–Sep 202561 flights76.3%
Oct–Dec 202593 flights67.4%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 2026119 flights86.6%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 78.2% on time across 335 flights.

Republic on ORD to MSY did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 67.4%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 84 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 92.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.2%. 21 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 54% of the 5,189 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
20%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
9%

54% 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 5,189 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 5,189 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 80.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 9.1% 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 837 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 78.0% on time across 336 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. 335 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 MSY

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 335 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 78.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 330 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