Carrier route record
MQDCA→ORD
Envoy Air · Washington to Chicago
- Flights
- 171
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 2%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on DCA to ORD lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 171 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,155 at 75.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Envoy on DCA 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
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 162 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.68%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.8%
Every carrier on DCA to ORD, 7,112 flights
These figures cover 171 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Envoy against every carrier on DCA to ORD
Envoy flew 171 of the 7,112 flights on DCA to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 80.9% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.9% to SkyWest at 60.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page)thin sample | 171 | 80.9% | 81 min | 4.68% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,155 | 75.6% | 75 min | 6.06% | B− |
| United Airlines | 3,411 | 73.8% | 87 min | 2.52% | C |
| American Airlines | 2,271 | 72.9% | 89 min | 3.61% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 60.4% | 93 min | 6.73% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.1% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 171 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's DCA to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 80.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Envoy on DCA to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 20251 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202553 flights76.0%
- Jan–Mar 202676 flights77.1%
- Apr–Jun 202641 flights92.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 80.9% on time across 171 flights.
Envoy on DCA to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 92.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.0%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 57 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late Envoy on DCA to ORD runs when it is late
Envoy on DCA to ORD often beats the schedule: 61 of 162 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 31 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 8 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early61 flights37.7%
- Within 15 min70 flights43.2%
- 15–29 min late11 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late8 flights4.9%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late5 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 162 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 19 of 162 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for Envoy on DCA to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 April 2026, 10 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across April, December, March and February, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 April 2026 | 10 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 December 2025 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 March 2026 | 2 hours 53 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 February 2026 | 2 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 April 2026 | 2 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 2,519 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,519 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 880 of the 2,519 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.68%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 612 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.
The return leg runs 83.5% on time across 171 flights, within 3 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. 171 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 DCA to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.68% 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. 162 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to ORD75.6%
- United Airlines on DCA to ORD73.8%
- American Airlines on DCA to ORD72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on DCA to ORD60.4%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.