Carrier route record
YXSAT→ORD
Republic Airways · San Antonio to Chicago
- Flights
- 101
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on SAT to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 101 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 889 at 78.9% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.9% on time across 889 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 95 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.4%
Every carrier on SAT to ORD, 2,004 flights
These figures cover 101 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on SAT to ORD
Republic flew 101 of the 2,004 flights on SAT to ORD, about 5% of it. Its 74.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.9% to SkyWest at 68.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 889 | 78.9% | 87 min | 1.12% | B |
| Envoy Air | 410 | 76.1% | 69 min | 3.17% | B− |
| Republic Airways (this page)thin sample | 101 | 74.7% | 54 min | 4.95% | C− |
| American Airlines | 500 | 74.2% | 87 min | 1.80% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 68.4% | 52 min | 5.77% | C− |
Envoy Air cancels 3.2% 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.
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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 SAT to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 74.7% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Republic on SAT to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202528 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202530 flights80.0%
- Jan–Mar 202634 flights64.5%
- Apr–Jun 20269 flights—
Scale runs 55% 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 74.7% on time across 101 flights.
Split by quarter, Republic on SAT to ORD 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 74.7% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 1,304 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,304 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 1,304 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.95%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 55 minutes, 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 101 flights, 8 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 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 SAT to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 55 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 95 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAT to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to SAT, the return leg
- United Airlines on SAT to ORD78.9%
- Envoy Air on SAT to ORD76.1%
- American Airlines on SAT to ORD74.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAT to ORD68.4%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.