Carrier route record
MQMEM→ORD
Envoy Air · Memphis to Chicago
- Flights
- 821
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on MEM 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 821 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 468 at 75.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on MEM to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 792 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.0%
Every carrier on MEM to ORD, 2,473 flights
These figures cover 821 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 MEM to ORD
Envoy flew 821 of the 2,473 flights on MEM to ORD, about 33% of it. Its 77.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.0% to American at 17.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 | 332 | 84.0% | 98 min | 3.61% | B− |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 821 | 77.1% | 62 min | 3.05% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 468 | 75.6% | 69 min | 4.70% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 835 | 73.1% | 90 min | 2.28% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 17.6% | 121 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 4.7% 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 23 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am235 flights87.7%
- 8am–11am230 flights79.6%
- 11am–2pm14 flights—
- 2pm–5pm177 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm165 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.7% of the time, against 65.1% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 235 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on MEM to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 62.9% on time, against 92.8% 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. November was the busiest month here, with 100 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.3%. 8 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 44% of the 11,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
44% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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. The split is drawn from 11,215 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,021 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.05%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
8.3% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 runs 78.6% on time across 822 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. 821 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 MEM to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.05% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 792 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MEM to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to MEM, the return leg
- United Airlines on MEM to ORD84.0%
- Republic Airways on MEM to ORD75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on MEM to ORD73.1%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- 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.