Carrier route record

MQORD→DCA

Envoy Air · Chicago to Washington

Flights: 171
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 2%
Carriers: 5

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

Envoy on ORD to DCA lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 171 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,393 at 70.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's ORD to DCA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 164 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.34%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.1%

Every carrier on ORD to DCA, 6,987 flights

These figures cover 171 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 DCA

Envoy flew 171 of the 6,987 flights on ORD to DCA, about 2% of it. Its 83.5% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.5% to SkyWest at 61.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	171	83.5%	47 min	2.34%	B
United Airlines	3,393	70.6%	75 min	1.80%	C
Republic Airways	1,055	68.5%	74 min	4.55%	C−
American Airlines	2,299	66.3%	95 min	4.18%	C−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	69	61.5%	93 min	5.80%	D−

Republic Airways cancels 4.5% 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 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 171 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's ORD to DCA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 83.5% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Envoy on ORD to DCA through the year

Oct–Dec 202554 flights76.5%
Jan–Mar 202676 flights80.6%
Apr–Jun 202641 flights97.6%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.5% on time across 171 flights.

Envoy on ORD to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 97.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.5%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 57 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 55% of the 1,255 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.

National Airspace System
55%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%
Carrier
14%
Extreme weather
14%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,255 reported delay minutes.

55% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 688 minutes out of 1,255, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 2.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.75%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 612 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 80.9% on time across 171 flights, within 3 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. 171 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 DCA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 171 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 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 164 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