Carrier route record
MQORD→MSY
Envoy Air · Chicago to New Orleans
- Flights
- 466
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on ORD to MSY lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 466 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 842 at 75.1% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's ORD to MSY record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 457 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on ORD to MSY, 2,402 flights
These figures cover 466 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 MSY
Envoy flew 466 of the 2,402 flights on ORD to MSY, about 19% of it. Its 83.8% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.8% to American at 62.6%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 75.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 62.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 401 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air (this page) | 466 | 83.8% | 58 min | 1.93% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 81.8% | 123 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 79.1% | 55 min | 1.53% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 335 | 78.2% | 72 min | 1.49% | B |
| United Airlines | 842 | 75.1% | 66 min | 1.07% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 216 | 67.5% | 80 min | 6.02% | C− |
| American Airlines | 401 | 62.6% | 90 min | 2.24% | D |
The spread between United and American is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 25 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am53 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am195 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm89 flights91.9%
- 2pm–5pm44 flights82.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am85 flights67.1%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.9% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 67.1%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 195 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on ORD to MSY through the year
July is the worst month at 73.1% on time, 24 points below October, the best at 96.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. January was the busiest month here, with 64 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.0%. 21 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 42% of the 4,269 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,269 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 4,269 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 sit at 1.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.3% 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.
The 837 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 82.1% on time across 465 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. 466 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 MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 466 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 457 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSY, every carrier
- Envoy on MSY to ORD, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSY79.1%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSY78.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSY75.1%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to MSY67.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSY62.6%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.