Carrier route record
MQBOS→ORD
Envoy Air · Boston to Chicago
- Flights
- 445
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on BOS to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a B−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 445 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,678 at 75.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on BOS 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
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 426 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on BOS to ORD, 7,637 flights
These figures cover 445 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 BOS to ORD
Envoy flew 445 of the 7,637 flights on BOS to ORD, about 6% of it. Its 75.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.6% to Delta at 65.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 75.0% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 65.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 962 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page) | 445 | 75.6% | 91 min | 3.60% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,678 | 75.0% | 85 min | 1.90% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 533 | 73.6% | 68 min | 2.25% | C |
| American Airlines | 2,125 | 73.4% | 93 min | 2.82% | C |
| Republic Airways | 894 | 70.4% | 81 min | 5.93% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 962 | 65.2% | 75 min | 3.12% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.9% 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 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 445 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am41 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm60 flights74.6%
- 2pm–5pm325 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm19 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 78.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
Envoy on BOS to ORD through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 64.9%. February is the strongest month at 88.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. February was the busiest month here, with 64 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.0%. 21 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 53% of the 9,509 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 8%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% 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 9,509 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 9,509 reported delay minutes.
33% 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 3,122 minutes out of 9,509, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.60%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 12.0% 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 867 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.8% on time across 444 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 445 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 BOS to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.60% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 426 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BOS to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to BOS, the return leg
- United Airlines on BOS to ORD75.0%
- JetBlue Airways on BOS to ORD73.6%
- American Airlines on BOS to ORD73.4%
- Republic Airways on BOS to ORD70.4%
- Delta Air Lines on BOS to ORD65.2%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) 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.