Carrier route record
YXRDU→ORD
Republic Airways · Raleigh to Chicago
- 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 RDU to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,018 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 553 at 82.2% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.2% on time across 553 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 972 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.4%
Every carrier on RDU to ORD, 3,589 flights
These figures cover 1,018 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 RDU to ORD
Republic flew 1,018 of the 3,589 flights on RDU to ORD, about 28% of it. Its 70.7% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 82.2% 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. American Airlines arrives on time 82.2% of the time; Envoy Air manages 72.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 523 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 553 | 82.2% | 145 min | 3.44% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 77.3% | 138 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,295 | 76.3% | 87 min | 1.16% | B |
| Envoy Air | 523 | 72.3% | 86 min | 1.72% | C |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 1,018 | 70.7% | 75 min | 3.63% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 57.7% | 139 min | 5.34% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 31 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 39 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am204 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am39 flights94.9%
- 11am–2pm106 flights76.9%
- 2pm–5pm439 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm230 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 94.9% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 439 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on RDU to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 46.3% on time, 38 points below May, the best at 84.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 66.4%. 10 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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 8,971 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 21,430 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 94.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.63%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 12.4% 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 73.5% 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 RDU to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.63% 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. 972 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to RDU, the return leg
- American Airlines on RDU to ORD82.2%
- United Airlines on RDU to ORD76.3%
- Envoy Air on RDU to ORD72.3%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to ORD57.7%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.