Carrier route record

MQORD→RIC

Envoy Air · Chicago to Richmond

Flights: 379
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 4

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

Envoy on ORD to RIC 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 379 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 827 at 77.3% on time.

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

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 369 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.2%

Every carrier on ORD to RIC, 2,219 flights

These figures cover 379 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 RIC

Envoy flew 379 of the 2,219 flights on ORD to RIC, about 17% of it. Its 78.9% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.9% to United at 58.7%. 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 77.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 61.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 718 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to RIC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)	379	78.9%	59 min	2.11%	B
Republic Airways	827	77.3%	65 min	2.42%	B
SkyWest Airlines	718	61.9%	96 min	4.32%	D−
United Airlinesthin sample	295	58.7%	78 min	2.03%	D

SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.3% 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 16 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am50 flights83.7%
8am–11am51 flights88.2%
11am–2pm71 flights82.9%
2pm–5pm119 flights75.2%
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am87 flights71.8%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.2% of the time, against 71.8% for the overnight 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 119 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on ORD to RIC through the year

Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
Oct–Dec 202531 flights64.5%
Jan–Mar 2026141 flights80.9%
Apr–Jun 2026178 flights78.0%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 78.9% on time across 379 flights.

Envoy on ORD to RIC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.9% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 64.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 126 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

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 4,621 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
23%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,621 reported delay minutes.

40% 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 4,621 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 sit at 2.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.0% 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 642 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 80.1% on time across 379 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. 379 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 RIC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 379 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 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 369 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