Carrier route record
MQDEN→ORD
Envoy Air · Denver to Chicago
- Flights
- 125
- 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 DEN to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 125 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,469 at 73.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on DEN 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
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 123 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.1%
Every carrier on DEN to ORD, 6,161 flights
These figures cover 125 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 DEN to ORD
Envoy flew 125 of the 6,161 flights on DEN to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 74.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 74.0% to Southwest at 63.7%. One 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 73.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 63.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 482 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page)thin sample | 125 | 74.0% | 60 min | 0.80% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 1,469 | 73.0% | 124 min | 2.04% | C |
| United Airlines | 3,756 | 71.4% | 79 min | 0.75% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 329 | 68.6% | 96 min | 1.22% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 482 | 63.7% | 63 min | 0.62% | D+ |
American leads Southwest by 9 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 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 125 flights.
- 5am–8am37 flights78.4%
- 8am–11am54 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm15 flights—
- 2pm–5pm17 flights—
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 82.7% on time for the 8am–11am window against 78.4% for 5am–8am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 54 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on DEN to ORD through the year
- Oct–Dec 20258 flights—
- Jan–Mar 2026108 flights75.7%
- Apr–Jun 20269 flights—
Scale runs 65% 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 74.0% on time across 125 flights.
Split by quarter, Envoy on DEN to ORD logged 8 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 108 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 9 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 74.0% annual figure is the one to use.
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 1,905 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 715 of the 1,905 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,905 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 888 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 76.0% on time across 125 flights, within 2 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. 125 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 DEN to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 125 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 74.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 123 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to DEN, the return leg
- American Airlines on DEN to ORD73.0%
- United Airlines on DEN to ORD71.4%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to ORD68.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ORD63.7%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.