Carrier route record
MQORD→MSN
Envoy Air · Chicago to Madison
- Flights
- 1,068
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- 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 MSN carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% 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 B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,068 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 651 at 78.4% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.4% on time across 651 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,025 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.4%
Every carrier on ORD to MSN, 4,029 flights
These figures cover 1,068 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 MSN
Envoy flew 1,068 of the 4,029 flights on ORD to MSN, about 27% of it. Its 76.9% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 78.4% to PSA at 49.5%. One 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 78.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,266 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 651 | 78.4% | 76 min | 2.46% | B |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 1,068 | 76.9% | 67 min | 3.93% | B− |
| United Airlines | 936 | 68.7% | 70 min | 2.03% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,266 | 67.0% | 97 min | 5.13% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 108 | 49.5% | 127 min | 10.19% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.1% 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 22 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am71 flights91.5%
- 8am–11am108 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm224 flights82.4%
- 2pm–5pm39 flights79.5%
- 5pm–8pm367 flights73.8%
- 8pm–5am259 flights69.1%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.5% of the time, against 69.1% for the overnight window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 367 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on ORD to MSN through the year
December is the weak month at 61.4% on time, against 84.5% in May. 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 143 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.0%. 14 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 48% of the 16,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
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 15,936 reported delay minutes.
48% 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 16,000 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 3.93%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 9.6% 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 108 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 runs 78.1% on time across 1,067 flights, within about 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. 1,068 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 MSN
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.93% 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. 1,025 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSN, every carrier
- Envoy on MSN to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSN78.4%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSN68.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSN67.0%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to MSN49.5%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.