Carrier route record
YXORD→RDU
Republic Airways · Chicago to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,018
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- 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 RDU sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,018 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 521 at 77.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.1% on time across 521 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 988 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on ORD to RDU, 3,592 flights
These figures cover 1,018 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 RDU
Republic flew 1,018 of the 3,592 flights on ORD to RDU, about 28% of it. Its 73.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 79.1% to PSA 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 77.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 61.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 555 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 79.1% | 65 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 521 | 77.1% | 54 min | 1.73% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,298 | 76.8% | 77 min | 1.00% | B |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 1,018 | 73.5% | 69 min | 2.85% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 66.4% | 137 min | 4.58% | C− |
| American Airlines | 555 | 61.8% | 96 min | 3.42% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 85 min | 0.00% | F+ |
American 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 21 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am8 flights—
- 8am–11am339 flights84.2%
- 11am–2pm109 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm312 flights67.5%
- 5pm–8pm153 flights62.8%
- 8pm–5am97 flights66.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.8% on time, against 84.2% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 339 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to RDU through the year
December is the weak month at 59.2% on time, against 89.7% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 67.9%. 9 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 58% of the 18,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
58% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 18,071 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 84.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.85%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 9.6% 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.
The 646 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 70.7% on time across 1,018 flights, within 3 points 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. 1,018 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.85% 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. 988 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to RDU, every carrier
- Republic on RDU to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to RDU77.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to RDU76.8%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to RDU66.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to RDU61.8%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.