Route reliability record
MEM→ORD
Memphis to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,529
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 491 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,529 MEM to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 798 at 76.2% on time.
Best time to fly MEM to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.7% of the time and Saturday flights 78.4%, against 74.8% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.2% on time across 798 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,425 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.2% on time across 798 flights
These figures cover 2,529 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MEM to ORD
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 338 | 83.0% | 95 min | 4.14% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 798 | 76.2% | 79 min | 3.38% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 524 | 74.9% | 64 min | 5.53% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 866 | 70.6% | 90 min | 3.00% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 33.3% | 60 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 5.5% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on MEM to ORD
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Memphis to Chicago
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MEM → ORDMemphis to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.6% | 76.2% | 3.38% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MEM → ORDMemphis to Chicago | Republic Airways | 70.8% | 74.9% | 5.53% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. MEM → ORDMemphis to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 68.5% | 70.6% | 3.00% | 11am–2pm, Wed | OO 5672 09:55 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am757 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am577 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm195 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm494 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm503 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% on time, against 84.7% for the 5am–8am 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 757 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MEM to ORD by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MEM to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.0%, a wide gap of 25.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.7%
- 8–11am80.0%
- 11am–2pm78.8%
- 2–5pm67.2%
- 5–8pm59.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
January is the weak month at 64.5% on time, against 85.0% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 244 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 71.3%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 50,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 50,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 49,816 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.80%, against 1.89% 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 actually costs
10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 491 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 71.7% on time across 2,525 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,529 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.80% 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. 2,425 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MEM to ORD questions
How often is MEM to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.2% of the 2,529 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MEM to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 76.2% on time across 798 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 70.6%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MEM to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.0%, 26 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are January delays on MEM to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 64.5% on time, compared with 85.0% in September. Across the year that is 21 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MEM — the return legseparate record
- Memphis International (MEM) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on MEM to ORD83.0%
- Envoy Air on MEM to ORD76.2%
- Republic Airways on MEM to ORD74.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on MEM to ORD70.6%
- MEM to ATL, a related route86.2%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- MEM to DFW, a related route76.1%
- United Airlines on-time record83.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record74.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MEM to ORD and ORD to MEM are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.