Carrier route record

MQORF→ORD

Envoy Air · Norfolk to Chicago

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 ORF to ORD lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 397 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 430 at 75.8% on time.

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

On time

76.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 387 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.9%

Every carrier on ORF to ORD, 1,865 flights

These figures cover 397 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 ORF to ORD

Envoy flew 397 of the 1,865 flights on ORF to ORD, about 21% of it. Its 76.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.8% to American at 50.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 ORF to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	156	85.8%	88 min	0.64%	A+
Envoy Air (this page)	397	76.7%	66 min	2.02%	B
Republic Airways	430	75.8%	62 min	3.02%	B−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	186	74.9%	81 min	7.53%	C−
United Airlines	690	73.7%	71 min	1.74%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	6	50.0%	29 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 3.0% 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 28 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am42 flights90.5%
8am–11am44 flights88.4%
11am–2pm93 flights76.9%
2pm–5pm70 flights79.7%
5pm–8pm104 flights63.0%
8pm–5am44 flights78.6%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.0% on time, against 90.5% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 104 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on ORF to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202573 flights80.6%
Oct–Dec 202568 flights76.1%
Jan–Mar 2026101 flights69.7%
Apr–Jun 2026155 flights79.9%

Scale runs 60% 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 76.7% on time across 397 flights.

Envoy on ORF to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 69.7%, 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.5%. 20 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 5,978 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
11%

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 5,978 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 5,978 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 2.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.50%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.0% 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 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 83.2% on time across 397 flights, 7 points above 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 ORF to ORD

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 76.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 387 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