Carrier route record

MQDSM→ORD

Envoy Air · Des Moines to Chicago

Flights: 464
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 6

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

Envoy on DSM to ORD lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 464 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 565 at 77.9% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.9% on time across 565 flights.

On time

76.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 450 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.59%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.1%

Every carrier on DSM to ORD, 3,403 flights

These figures cover 464 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 DSM to ORD

Envoy flew 464 of the 3,403 flights on DSM to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 76.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 84.7% to PSA at 0.0%. 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 77.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,167 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DSM to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	263	84.7%	145 min	5.70%	B−
Republic Airways	565	77.9%	85 min	4.60%	B−
Envoy Air (this page)	464	76.9%	72 min	2.59%	B
United Airlines	943	73.2%	78 min	1.70%	C
SkyWest Airlines	1,167	66.6%	116 min	6.08%	C−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	1	0.0%	184 min	0.00%	F+

SkyWest Airlines 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.

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 14 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am118 flights79.3%
8am–11am2 flights—
11am–2pm132 flights75.8%
2pm–5pm75 flights76.7%
5pm–8pm52 flights84.0%
8pm–5am85 flights70.4%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 84.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 14 points.

Across the year

Envoy on DSM to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202546 flights80.0%
Oct–Dec 202567 flights76.6%
Jan–Mar 2026171 flights75.4%
Apr–Jun 2026180 flights77.6%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 76.9% on time across 464 flights.

Quarter by quarter Envoy on DSM to ORD held fairly steady: 80.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 76.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 75.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 77.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.2%. 18 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 7,475 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
22%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
16%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,475 reported delay minutes.

42% 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 7,475 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 2.59%, 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

8.0% 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.

At 299 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 75.4% on time across 465 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. 464 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 DSM to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 464 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 76.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 450 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