Carrier route record
MQCLE→ORD
Envoy Air · Cleveland to Chicago
- Flights
- 814
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on CLE to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% 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 814 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,173 at 77.0% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.0% on time across 2,173 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 775 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.6%
Every carrier on CLE to ORD, 4,897 flights
These figures cover 814 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 CLE to ORD
Envoy flew 814 of the 4,897 flights on CLE to ORD, about 17% of it. Its 73.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.0% to SkyWest at 68.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.0% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 947 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,173 | 77.0% | 75 min | 1.47% | B |
| Republic Airways | 543 | 76.6% | 73 min | 6.63% | B− |
| American Airlines | 420 | 74.1% | 118 min | 5.00% | C− |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 814 | 73.7% | 73 min | 4.55% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 947 | 68.5% | 104 min | 4.44% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.6% 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 37 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am129 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am91 flights72.2%
- 11am–2pm113 flights89.3%
- 2pm–5pm233 flights74.4%
- 5pm–8pm95 flights70.9%
- 8pm–5am153 flights52.2%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 89.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 233 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on CLE to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 49.0% on time, against 87.9% in May. 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 143 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.4%. 9 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 57% 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
57% 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 24 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 14,875 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.55%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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 316 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 runs 72.7% on time across 814 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. 814 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 CLE to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.55% 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. 775 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to CLE, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLE to ORD77.0%
- Republic Airways on CLE to ORD76.6%
- American Airlines on CLE to ORD74.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on CLE to ORD68.5%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) 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.