Carrier route record

MQBHM→ORD

Envoy Air · Birmingham to Chicago

Flights: 771
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 68%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on BHM to ORD lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 771 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on BHM to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 758 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.4%

Every carrier on BHM to ORD, 1,137 flights

These figures cover 771 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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 BHM to ORD

Envoy flew 771 of the 1,137 flights on BHM to ORD, most of the route. Its 78.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to SkyWest at 55.2%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on BHM to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
PSA Airlinesthin sample	2	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	256	84.6%	71 min	1.17%	B
Envoy Air (this page)	771	78.0%	79 min	1.43%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	108	55.2%	112 min	2.78%	D

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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am339 flights85.1%
8am–11am94 flights79.6%
11am–2pm104 flights80.6%
2pm–5pm87 flights60.5%
5pm–8pm147 flights68.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.1% of the time, against 60.5% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 339 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on BHM to ORD through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 67.8% on time, against 84.1% in April. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.5%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 13,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
27%
Extreme weather
16%
Carrier
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,137 reported delay minutes.

42% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 584 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 79.3% on time across 773 flights, within about a point 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. 771 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 BHM to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 771 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 78.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 758 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