Carrier route record

MQFSD→ORD

Envoy Air · Sioux Falls to Chicago

Flights: 393
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 5

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

Envoy on FSD 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 393 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on FSD to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 377 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.6%

Every carrier on FSD to ORD, 1,831 flights

These figures cover 393 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 FSD to ORD

Envoy flew 393 of the 1,831 flights on FSD to ORD, about 21% of it. Its 76.9% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.3% to SkyWest at 59.3%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on FSD to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	344	81.3%	68 min	2.91%	B
Envoy Air (this page)	393	76.9%	68 min	3.82%	B−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	30	70.0%	84 min	0.00%	C+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	60	63.8%	57 min	3.33%	D−
SkyWest Airlines	1,004	59.3%	104 min	3.88%	D−

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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am101 flights93.0%
8am–11am6 flights—
11am–2pm73 flights76.4%
2pm–5pm98 flights66.3%
5pm–8pm115 flights72.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.0% of the time, against 66.3% for the afternoon window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 115 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on FSD to ORD through the year

Oct–Dec 202512 flights—
Jan–Mar 2026211 flights75.9%
Apr–Jun 2026170 flights79.0%

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 393 flights.

Split by quarter, Envoy on FSD to ORD logged 12 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 211 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 170 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 76.9% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 5,931 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
48%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
14%
Extreme weather
11%

Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,931 reported delay minutes.

48% 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 5,931 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 3.82%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 9.3% 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.

At 462 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.5% on time across 390 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 393 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 FSD to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.82% 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. 377 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