Carrier route record
MQORD→MCI
Envoy Air · Chicago to Kansas City
- Flights
- 820
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- 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 MCI carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 820 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 567 at 77.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.2% on time across 567 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 792 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.9%
Every carrier on ORD to MCI, 4,146 flights
These figures cover 820 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 MCI
Envoy flew 820 of the 4,146 flights on ORD to MCI, about 20% of it. Its 74.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.2% to American at 58.8%. 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 77.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 945 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 567 | 77.2% | 66 min | 1.59% | B |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 820 | 74.2% | 60 min | 3.41% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,435 | 71.6% | 71 min | 1.46% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 945 | 67.9% | 87 min | 3.81% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 59.0% | 56 min | 2.50% | D |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 339 | 58.8% | 90 min | 2.65% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.8% 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 21 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am26 flights—
- 8am–11am157 flights76.8%
- 11am–2pm187 flights86.2%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights72.0%
- 5pm–8pm229 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am126 flights68.1%
Scale runs 55% 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 86.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 65.1%. 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 229 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on ORD to MCI through the year
January is the weak month at 46.7% on time, against 90.0% in September. 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 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.1%. 11 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 51% of the 12,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
51% 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 12,000 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. The split is drawn from 12,155 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.41%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
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 403 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 73.8% on time across 819 flights, within half 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. 820 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 MCI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.41% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 792 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MCI, every carrier
- Envoy on MCI to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to MCI77.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MCI71.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MCI67.9%
- American Airlines on ORD to MCI58.8%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) 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.