Carrier route record

YXORD→SAT

Republic Airways · Chicago to San Antonio

Flights: 101
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
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 SAT lands a B−, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 101 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 833 at 75.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Republic's ORD to SAT record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 96 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.5%

Every carrier on ORD to SAT, 1,966 flights

These figures cover 101 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 SAT

Republic flew 101 of the 1,966 flights on ORD to SAT, about 5% of it. Its 82.3% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.3% to American at 68.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 75.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 548 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to SAT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	101	82.3%	62 min	3.96%	B−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	132	80.5%	64 min	3.03%	B−
Envoy Airthin sample	352	76.8%	57 min	2.56%	B
United Airlines	833	75.6%	74 min	1.08%	B
American Airlines	548	68.7%	74 min	2.55%	C

United leads American by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 101 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Republic's ORD to SAT record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 82.3% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Republic on ORD to SAT through the year

Jul–Sep 202528 flights—
Oct–Dec 202530 flights80.0%
Jan–Mar 202634 flights78.1%
Apr–Jun 20269 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. 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 82.3% on time across 101 flights.

Split by quarter, Republic on ORD to SAT logged 28 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 30 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 34 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 9 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 82.3% annual figure is the one to use.

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 1,048 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Extreme weather
27%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
16%

Extreme weather accounts for 27% 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 4.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,048 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 88.7% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.96%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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

7.3% 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.

The 1,041 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.7% on time across 101 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 101 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 SAT

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 96 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