Carrier route record
MQDFW→ORD
Envoy Air · Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago
- Flights
- 135
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 2%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on DFW 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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 135 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,010 at 71.7% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.7% on time across 2,010 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 127 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on DFW to ORD, 6,964 flights
These figures cover 135 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 DFW to ORD
Envoy flew 135 of the 6,964 flights on DFW to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 68.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.5% to American at 65.4%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 71.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,239 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 15 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 2,010 | 71.7% | 94 min | 1.79% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 431 | 69.4% | 95 min | 3.25% | C− |
| Envoy Air (this page)thin sample | 135 | 68.5% | 76 min | 5.19% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 129 | 66.9% | 93 min | 1.55% | C |
| American Airlines | 4,239 | 65.4% | 77 min | 3.85% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.9% 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 135 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's DFW to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 68.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Envoy on DFW to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202551 flights67.4%
- Oct–Dec 202530 flights70.0%
- Jan–Mar 202613 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202641 flights60.5%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 68.5% on time across 135 flights.
Quarter by quarter Envoy on DFW to ORD held fairly steady: 67.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 70.0% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 60.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 3,037 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 19%Extreme weather
- 11%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,037 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 3,037 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 5.19%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.0% 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.
The 802 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.9% on time across 134 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 135 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 DFW to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 127 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to DFW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DFW to ORD71.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to ORD69.4%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to ORD66.9%
- American Airlines on DFW to ORD65.4%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.