Carrier route record
MQLIT→ORD
Envoy Air · Little Rock to Chicago
- Flights
- 952
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 68%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on LIT 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 952 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Envoy on LIT to ORD runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 65 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 933 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.8%
Every carrier on LIT to ORD, 1,404 flights
These figures cover 952 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 LIT to ORD
Envoy flew 952 of the 1,404 flights on LIT to ORD, most of the route. Its 71.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 71.1% to Republic at 50.0%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page) | 952 | 71.1% | 68 min | 1.68% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 437 | 61.0% | 91 min | 4.81% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 15 | 50.0% | 86 min | 20.00% | F− |
Flight by flight
Envoy flight numbers on LIT to ORD
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 20 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–8am346 flights75.0%
- 8am–11am35 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm211 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm122 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm237 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 82.4% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 346 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on LIT to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 56.2% on time, against 88.6% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. June was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.8%. 16 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 18,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 18,347 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 sit at 1.68% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.
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. 11.3% 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.
The 552 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 75.4% on time across 953 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 952 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 LIT to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 952 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 71.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 933 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.