Route reliability record

MSN→ORD

Madison to Chicago

Flights: 4,030
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 108 mi
Carriers: 5

This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 4,030 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,067 at 78.1% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.1% on time across 1,067 flights.

On time

71.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,871 completed flights

Avg delay

91 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.85%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Envoy

78.1% on time across 1,067 flights

These figures cover 4,030 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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

Which airline is most reliable on MSN to ORD

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 78.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,268 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MSN to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	1,067	78.1%	72 min	3.84%	B−
Republic Airways	650	76.0%	74 min	2.46%	B
United Airlines	937	72.6%	71 min	2.35%	C
SkyWest Airlines	1,268	66.8%	109 min	4.97%	C−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	108	33.7%	165 min	12.04%	F−

SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.0% 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

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 29 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am977 flights82.2%
8am–11am871 flights79.4%
11am–2pm595 flights72.4%
2pm–5pm875 flights63.9%
5pm–8pm475 flights52.8%
8pm–5am237 flights64.7%

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.8% on time, against 82.2% 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 977 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 19 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, January worst

January is the weak month at 62.4% on time, against 81.3% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 427 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.0%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 99,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
27%
Extreme weather
9%
Security
0%

36% 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 99,000 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. The split is drawn from 99,322 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 82.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.85%, 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 actually costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% 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 108 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 71.4% on time across 4,029 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.

The sample behind these figures is 4,030 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.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.85% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 3,871 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

MSN to ORD questions

How often is MSN to ORD delayed?

Roughly one flight in four arrive 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 4,030 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.

Which airline is most reliable on MSN to ORD?

Envoy Air leads at 78.1% on time across 1,067 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 66.8%, a gap of 11 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 MSN to ORD?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 82.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 52.8%, 29 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 MSN to ORD?

January is the weakest month at 62.4% on time, compared with 81.3% in September. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. MSN to ORD and ORD to MSN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures