Carrier route record
MQORD→CVG
Envoy Air · Chicago to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 1,333
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on ORD to CVG sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,333 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,368 at 79.3% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.3% on time across 1,368 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,301 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on ORD to CVG, 4,647 flights
These figures cover 1,333 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% 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 ORD to CVG
Envoy flew 1,333 of the 4,647 flights on ORD to CVG, about 29% of it. Its 71.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 79.3% to American at 58.2%. Two 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 79.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 63.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 896 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,368 | 79.3% | 66 min | 3.36% | B− |
| United Airlines | 945 | 72.4% | 69 min | 1.69% | C |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 1,333 | 71.4% | 71 min | 2.40% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 68.6% | 125 min | 5.41% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 896 | 63.4% | 89 min | 5.36% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 58.2% | 89 min | 1.47% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.4% 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 CVG
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 17 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am89 flights82.0%
- 8am–11am154 flights74.0%
- 11am–2pm88 flights85.1%
- 2pm–5pm249 flights68.6%
- 5pm–8pm546 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am207 flights67.9%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 85.1% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 67.9%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 546 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on ORD to CVG through the year
December is the weak month at 55.3% on time, against 84.1% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.8%. 14 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 57% of the 26,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,281 reported delay minutes.
57% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 2.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.5% 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 264 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 72.8% on time across 1,338 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,333 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 Envoy on ORD to CVG
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 84.1% on time and December 55.3%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,301 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CVG, every carrier
- Envoy on CVG to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CVG79.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to CVG72.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CVG63.4%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.