Carrier route record
MQBNA→ORD
Envoy Air · Nashville to Chicago
- Flights
- 782
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 9
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on BNA to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 782 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 562 at 73.4% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 73.4% on time across 562 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 748 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.4%
Every carrier on BNA to ORD, 5,024 flights
These figures cover 782 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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
Envoy against every carrier on BNA to ORD
Envoy flew 782 of the 5,024 flights on BNA to ORD, about 16% of it. Its 73.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of nine carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.7% to American at 65.5%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 73.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 384 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 338 | 76.7% | 59 min | 1.48% | B |
| Republic Airways | 562 | 73.4% | 80 min | 2.14% | C |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 782 | 73.0% | 75 min | 3.84% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,380 | 72.3% | 93 min | 2.10% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 81 | 67.9% | 82 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 27 | 66.7% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 30 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,467 | 65.9% | 102 min | 3.68% | C− |
| American Airlines | 384 | 65.5% | 120 min | 1.82% | C |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.7% 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 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 23 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am106 flights87.6%
- 8am–11am134 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm90 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm168 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm284 flights64.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 87.6% for the 5am–8am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 284 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on BNA to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 62.0% on time, against 83.9% in June. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 162 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.8%. 16 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 50% of the 15,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
50% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 15,196 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.84%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% 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.
At 409 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 74.8% on time across 783 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. 782 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 BNA to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 748 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to BNA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to ORD76.7%
- Republic Airways on BNA to ORD73.4%
- United Airlines on BNA to ORD72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on BNA to ORD65.9%
- American Airlines on BNA to ORD65.5%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.