Route reliability record
ORD→MEM
Chicago to Memphis
- Flights
- 2,525
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 491 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 2,525 ORD to MEM flights, of which Envoy Air flew 799 at 76.9% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to MEM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 79.4% of the time and Saturday flights 77.0%, against 71.7% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.9% on time across 799 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,437 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.33%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.9% on time across 799 flights
These figures cover 2,525 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to MEM
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 70.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 870 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 799 | 76.9% | 56 min | 3.25% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 522 | 70.4% | 84 min | 5.56% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 870 | 70.2% | 71 min | 1.72% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 333 | 65.2% | 74 min | 4.20% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 33 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 5.6% 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
Flights on ORD to MEM
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Memphis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → MEMChicago to Memphis | Envoy Air | 74.4% | 76.9% | 3.25% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → MEMChicago to Memphis | SkyWest Airlines | 69.0% | 70.2% | 1.72% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 5593 08:50 |
| 3. ORD → MEMChicago to Memphis | Republic Airways | 66.5% | 70.4% | 5.56% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am60 flights79.3%
- 8am–11am684 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm499 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm393 flights64.1%
- 5pm–8pm241 flights71.7%
- 8pm–5am648 flights63.0%
Scale runs 55% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.0% on time, against 79.4% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 684 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to MEM by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ORD to MEM, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 79.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 63.0%, a wide gap of 16.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am79.3%
- 8–11am79.4%
- 11am–2pm76.7%
- 2–5pm64.1%
- 5–8pm71.7%
- 8pm–5am63.0%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 60.2% on time, against 87.6% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 244 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.9%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 49,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 48,704 reported delay minutes.
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 49,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.33%, against 1.89% 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 actually costs
10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 491 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 74.8% on time across 2,529 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,525 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MEM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.33% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,437 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to MEM questions
How often is ORD to MEM delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.3% of the 2,525 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to MEM?
Envoy Air leads at 76.9% on time across 799 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 70.2%, a gap of 7 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to MEM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 79.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.0%, 16 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on ORD to MEM?
December is the weakest month at 60.2% on time, compared with 87.6% in September. Across the year that is 27 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- MEM to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Memphis International (MEM) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to MEM76.9%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MEM70.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MEM70.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MEM65.2%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to MEM, a related route81.1%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to MEM and MEM to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.