Carrier route record

MQORD→ALB

Envoy Air · Chicago to Albany

Flights: 756
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 33%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on ORD to ALB lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 756 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 587 at 74.2% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on ORD to ALB from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 738 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.7%

Every carrier on ORD to ALB, 2,304 flights

These figures cover 756 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 ORD to ALB

Envoy flew 756 of the 2,304 flights on ORD to ALB, about 33% of it. Its 79.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 79.1% to United at 73.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to ALB
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)	756	79.1%	54 min	2.38%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	205	74.4%	84 min	2.44%	C
Republic Airways	587	74.2%	71 min	4.09%	C−
United Airlines	756	73.7%	67 min	1.32%	C

Republic Airways cancels 4.1% 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

Envoy flight numbers on ORD to ALB

MQ 425608:1577.7% · 294 flights

Departure window

When Envoy runs best on this route

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 756 flights.

5am–8am13 flights—
8am–11am282 flights83.3%
11am–2pm55 flights76.5%
2pm–5pm181 flights79.2%
5pm–8pm47 flights73.9%
8pm–5am178 flights73.4%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.3% of the time, against 73.4% for the overnight window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 282 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on ORD to ALB through the year

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

January is the weak month at 51.4% on time, against 91.5% in May. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.2%. 9 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 47% of the 8,240 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
National Airspace System
23%
Carrier
16%
Extreme weather
15%
Security
0%

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 8,240 reported delay minutes.

47% 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 8,240 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 sit at 2.38% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.2% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 723 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg runs 81.1% on time across 756 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. 756 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 ORD to ALB

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 756 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 79.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 738 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures