Carrier route record

MQORD→SDF

Envoy Air · Chicago to Louisville

Flights: 415
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
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 SDF earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 415 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,733 at 75.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's ORD to SDF record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 410 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.20%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.3%

Every carrier on ORD to SDF, 2,804 flights

These figures cover 415 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 SDF

Envoy flew 415 of the 2,804 flights on ORD to SDF, about 15% of it. Its 84.1% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.1% to United at 33.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 SDF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)	415	84.1%	54 min	1.20%	B
Republic Airways	1,733	75.0%	75 min	3.87%	B−
SkyWest Airlines	645	71.0%	69 min	3.10%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	4	50.0%	71 min	0.00%	F+
United Airlinesthin sample	6	33.3%	45 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 3.9% 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 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am84 flights90.5%
8am–11am50 flights75.0%
11am–2pm146 flights89.7%
2pm–5pm112 flights78.9%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am23 flights—

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

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.5% of the time, against 75.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 146 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on ORD to SDF through the year

Jul–Sep 2025232 flights85.2%
Oct–Dec 202584 flights90.5%
Jan–Mar 202668 flights72.7%
Apr–Jun 202631 flights83.9%

Scale runs 65% 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 84.1% on time across 415 flights.

Envoy on ORD to SDF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 90.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 72.7%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 104 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 89.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.4%. 9 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 51% of the 3,538 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
51%
National Airspace System
28%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
8%

51% 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 3,538 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 3,538 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 90.5% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 286 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.5% on time across 416 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. 415 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 SDF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 415 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 410 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