Carrier route record
MQMSN→ORD
Envoy Air · Madison to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,067
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on MSN to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,067 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 650 at 76.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on MSN 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
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,025 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.9%
Every carrier on MSN to ORD, 4,030 flights
These figures cover 1,067 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Envoy against every carrier on MSN to ORD
Envoy flew 1,067 of the 4,030 flights on MSN to ORD, about 26% of it. Its 78.1% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.1% to PSA at 33.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.0% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page) | 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
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 19 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am283 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am207 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm114 flights78.6%
- 2pm–5pm173 flights71.9%
- 5pm–8pm129 flights68.3%
- 8pm–5am161 flights73.8%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.4% of the time, against 68.3% for the evening window. That is 19 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 283 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on MSN to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 68.1% on time, 22 points below May, the best at 89.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 142 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.5%. 13 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 16,046 reported delay minutes.
40% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 run at 3.84%, 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 costs
7.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 76.9% on time across 1,068 flights, within about 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. 1,067 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 MSN to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.84% 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. 1,025 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSN to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to MSN, the return leg
- Republic Airways on MSN to ORD76.0%
- United Airlines on MSN to ORD72.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSN to ORD66.8%
- PSA Airlines on MSN to ORD33.7%
- 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.