Carrier route record
MQORD→LEX
Envoy Air · Chicago to Lexington
- Flights
- 295
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on ORD to LEX sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 295 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Envoy on ORD to LEX runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 291 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.8%
Every carrier on ORD to LEX, 1,733 flights
These figures cover 295 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 LEX
Envoy flew 295 of the 1,733 flights on ORD to LEX, about 17% of it. Its 72.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 72.9% to SkyWest at 69.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page)thin sample | 295 | 72.9% | 77 min | 1.36% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 69.6% | 62 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,415 | 69.1% | 92 min | 2.97% | C |
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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am54 flights75.9%
- 8am–11am44 flights93.2%
- 11am–2pm57 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm49 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am91 flights64.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 63.3% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 91 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on ORD to LEX through the year
- Oct–Dec 202551 flights56.9%
- Jan–Mar 2026183 flights73.2%
- Apr–Jun 202661 flights85.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. 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 72.9% on time across 295 flights.
Envoy on ORD to LEX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 85.2% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 56.9%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 98 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.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.3%. 17 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 6,097 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Extreme weather
- 20%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,097 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 6,097 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 1.36% 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. 9.3% 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 323 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.7% on time across 296 flights, 4 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 295 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 LEX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 295 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 72.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 291 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.