Carrier route record
MQCVG→ORD
Envoy Air · Cincinnati to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,338
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on CVG 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,338 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,346 at 77.8% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.8% on time across 1,346 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,301 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on CVG to ORD, 4,630 flights
These figures cover 1,338 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CVG to ORD
Envoy flew 1,338 of the 4,630 flights on CVG to ORD, about 29% of it. Its 72.8% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.8% to American at 41.8%. Two 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 77.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 58.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 895 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,346 | 77.8% | 80 min | 3.49% | B− |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 1,338 | 72.8% | 72 min | 2.54% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 70.6% | 133 min | 8.11% | C− |
| United Airlines | 946 | 68.5% | 74 min | 2.43% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 895 | 58.6% | 114 min | 5.70% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 41.8% | 75 min | 1.47% | F |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.7% 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.
Flight by flight
Envoy flight numbers on CVG to ORD
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 30 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am483 flights79.5%
- 8am–11am405 flights72.6%
- 11am–2pm197 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm103 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm116 flights49.5%
- 8pm–5am34 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.5% on time, against 79.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 483 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on CVG to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 57.4% on time, against 83.8% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.8%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
42% 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 11,000 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 25,384 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 79.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 9.8% 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 264 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 71.4% on time across 1,333 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,338 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Envoy on CVG to ORD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 83.8% on time and December 57.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,301 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to CVG, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CVG to ORD77.8%
- United Airlines on CVG to ORD68.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on CVG to ORD58.6%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.