Carrier route record

MQORD→MEM

Envoy Air · Chicago to Memphis

Flights: 822
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 33%
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 MEM lands a B−, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 822 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 832 at 71.8% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Envoy on ORD to MEM from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 796 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.16%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.8%

Every carrier on ORD to MEM, 2,468 flights

These figures cover 822 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 MEM

Envoy flew 822 of the 2,468 flights on ORD to MEM, about 33% of it. Its 78.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.6% to American at 37.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 MEM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)	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

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 12 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am15 flights—
8am–11am224 flights85.1%
11am–2pm177 flights82.1%
2pm–5pm72 flights73.5%
5pm–8pm185 flights73.3%
8pm–5am149 flights72.7%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.1% of the time, against 72.7% for the overnight window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 224 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on ORD to MEM through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, December worst

December is the weak month at 62.5% on time, against 87.5% in August. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 99 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.1%. 7 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 9,348 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
National Airspace System
25%
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 9,348 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 9,348 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 3.16%, 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

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 runs 77.1% on time across 821 flights, within 2 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. 822 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 MEM

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.16% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 796 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