Carrier route record

MQDCA→ORD

Envoy Air · Washington to Chicago

Flights: 171
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 2%
Carriers: 5

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

Envoy on DCA to ORD lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 171 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,059 at 75.3% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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.

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 1.81%

Whole route

74.3%

Every carrier on DCA to ORD, 6,992 flights

These figures cover 171 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Envoy against every carrier on DCA to ORD

Envoy flew 171 of the 6,992 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 74.3%. 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 66.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	171	80.9%	81 min	4.68%	B−
Republic Airways	1,059	75.3%	76 min	5.57%	B−
American Airlines	2,301	74.7%	91 min	4.00%	C−
United Airlines	3,392	73.6%	89 min	2.21%	C
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	69	66.2%	97 min	5.80%	C−

Republic Airways cancels 5.6% 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 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.

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.

Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
21%
Extreme weather
12%

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 1.9 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. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 880 of the 2,519 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 4.68%, against 1.81% 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 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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 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.

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