Carrier route record

MQORD→ORF

Envoy Air · Chicago to Norfolk

Flights: 397
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on ORD to ORF 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 roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 397 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 428 at 77.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's ORD to ORF record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 388 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.8%

Every carrier on ORD to ORF, 1,863 flights

These figures cover 397 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 ORF

Envoy flew 397 of the 1,863 flights on ORD to ORF, about 21% of it. Its 83.2% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.2% to PSA at 52.4%. Three 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 77.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 66.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 690 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to ORF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)	397	83.2%	51 min	2.02%	B
Republic Airways	428	77.4%	73 min	1.40%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	156	69.3%	51 min	1.92%	C
United Airlines	690	66.9%	70 min	1.74%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	6	66.7%	39 min	0.00%	C+
PSA Airlinesthin sample	186	52.4%	89 min	10.75%	F−

Republic leads United by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 16 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am44 flights95.5%
8am–11am146 flights79.2%
11am–2pm17 flights—
2pm–5pm151 flights82.8%
5pm–8pm14 flights—
8pm–5am25 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.5% of the time, against 79.2% for the morning window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 151 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on ORD to ORF through the year

Jul–Sep 202573 flights87.5%
Oct–Dec 202568 flights76.1%
Jan–Mar 2026101 flights81.8%
Apr–Jun 2026155 flights85.3%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.2% on time across 397 flights.

Envoy on ORD to ORF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 87.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.1%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 99 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.5%. 24 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 45% of the 3,320 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
45%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
9%

45% 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 3,320 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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. The split is drawn from 3,320 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.5% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.9% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 717 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.7% on time across 397 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 397 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 ORF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 397 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 83.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 388 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