Route reliability record
ORD→MEM
Chicago to Memphis
- Flights
- 2,468
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 491 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route 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 about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,468 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 822 at 78.6% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.6% on time across 822 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,390 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
78.6% on time across 822 flights
These figures cover 2,468 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to MEM
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 78.6% of the time; Republic Airways manages 70.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 465 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 822 | 78.6% | 55 min | 3.16% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 832 | 71.8% | 67 min | 1.44% | C |
| Republic Airways | 465 | 70.7% | 74 min | 5.38% | C− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 333 | 65.4% | 72 min | 3.60% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 16 | 37.5% | 66 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways 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.
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 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am61 flights79.7%
- 8am–11am674 flights78.8%
- 11am–2pm499 flights79.0%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm254 flights73.5%
- 8pm–5am620 flights64.1%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.1% on time, against 79.7% for the 5am–8am 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 674 flights scheduled in it.
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. June was the busiest month here, with 241 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.8%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 43,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,780 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 43,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 run at 3.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% 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 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.0% on time across 2,473 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 2,468 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 this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,390 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.2% of the 2,468 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to MEM?
Envoy Air leads at 78.6% on time across 822 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 70.7%, a gap of 8 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 79.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.1%, 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
- Envoy Air on-time record78.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.