Carrier route record

MQBUF→ORD

Envoy Air · Buffalo to Chicago

Flights: 423
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 5

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

Envoy on BUF to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 423 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 476 at 84.0% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Envoy on BUF to ORD runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 408 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.31%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.0%

Every carrier on BUF to ORD, 2,196 flights

These figures cover 423 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 BUF to ORD

Envoy flew 423 of the 2,196 flights on BUF to ORD, about 19% of it. Its 70.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 84.0% to SkyWest at 60.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 84.0% of the time; United Airlines manages 74.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 612 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BUF to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	476	84.0%	124 min	1.47%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	355	76.2%	95 min	3.66%	B−
United Airlines	612	74.1%	88 min	1.47%	C
Envoy Air (this page)	423	70.8%	68 min	3.31%	C−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	330	60.2%	134 min	6.06%	D−

American leads United by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am2 flights—
8am–11am41 flights80.0%
11am–2pm163 flights80.1%
2pm–5pm73 flights73.5%
5pm–8pm144 flights56.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.9% on time, against 80.1% for the 11am–2pm 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 163 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on BUF to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025131 flights64.3%
Oct–Dec 2025176 flights73.5%
Jan–Mar 2026109 flights75.2%
Apr–Jun 20267 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 70.8% on time across 423 flights.

Envoy on BUF to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 75.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 64.3%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 141 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.1%. 11 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 55% of the 8,093 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
55%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
7%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
1%

55% 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 8,093 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 8,093 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 2,683 minutes out of 8,093, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.31%, 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. 10.3% 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 474 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.8% on time across 422 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 423 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 BUF to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.31% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 408 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