Route reliability record
MQT→ORD
Marquette to Chicago
- Flights
- 748
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 303 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 748 MQT to ORD flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MQT to ORD: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.0%, against 71.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 708 completed flights
Avg delay
127 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.08%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
71.9% on time across 748 flights
These figures cover 748 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.4% 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 MQT to ORD
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 | 748 | 71.9% | 127 min | 5.08% | C− |
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 748 flights.
- 5am–8am175 flights73.4%
- 8am–11am190 flights74.3%
- 11am–2pm62 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm152 flights68.3%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 75.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 68.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 190 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MQT 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 MQT to ORD, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 75.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 68.3%, a real gap of 6.7 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am73.4%
- 8–11am74.3%
- 11am–2pm75.0%
- 2–5pm70.3%
- 5–8pm68.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
May is the best month on the calendar at 87.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.7%, a spread of 13 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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Extreme weather
- 19%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 30% 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 5.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,249 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 1 to one.
Cancellations run at 5.08%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
16.4% 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 303 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 72.4% on time across 748 flights, within half a point 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. 748 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.
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 5.08% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.1 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 708 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MQT to ORD questions
How often is MQT to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 28.1% of the 748 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.1 hours on average.
How reliable is MQT to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
71.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MQT to ORD?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 75.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.3%, 7 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 October delays on MQT to ORD?
October is the weakest month at 54.1% on time, compared with 87.8% in May. Across the year that is 34 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 MQT — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- LAX to ORD, a related route76.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record71.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MQT to ORD and ORD to MQT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MQT to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
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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.