Carrier route record
MQALB→ORD
Envoy Air · Albany to Chicago
- Flights
- 756
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on ALB to ORD lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 756 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 756 at 76.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on ALB to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 737 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on ALB to ORD, 2,303 flights
These figures cover 756 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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
Envoy against every carrier on ALB to ORD
Envoy flew 756 of the 2,303 flights on ALB to ORD, about 33% of it. Its 81.1% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 81.1% to Republic at 71.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page) | 756 | 81.1% | 83 min | 2.12% | B |
| United Airlines | 756 | 76.4% | 95 min | 1.85% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 204 | 73.9% | 82 min | 2.45% | C |
| Republic Airways | 587 | 71.8% | 75 min | 4.43% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.4% 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.
Flight by flight
Envoy flight numbers on ALB to ORD
Departure window
When Envoy runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am232 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am17 flights—
- 11am–2pm252 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm63 flights75.0%
- 5pm–8pm192 flights65.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 65.9% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 252 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on ALB to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 67.1% on time, 31 points below June, the best at 98.4%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.4%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Envoy 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 11,467 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 3,960 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.0% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 723 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 79.1% on time across 756 flights, within 2 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. 756 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 Envoy on ALB to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 756 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 81.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 737 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ALB to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to ALB, the return leg
- United Airlines on ALB to ORD76.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ALB to ORD73.9%
- Republic Airways on ALB to ORD71.8%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.