Carrier route record

MQRDU→ORD

Envoy Air · Raleigh to Chicago

Flights: 523
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 7

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

Envoy on RDU to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 523 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 553 at 82.2% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.2% on time across 553 flights.

On time

72.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 509 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.72%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.4%

Every carrier on RDU to ORD, 3,589 flights

These figures cover 523 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 RDU to ORD

Envoy flew 523 of the 3,589 flights on RDU to ORD, about 15% of it. Its 72.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 82.2% to PSA at 50.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 82.2% of the time; Republic Airways manages 70.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,018 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on RDU to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	553	82.2%	145 min	3.44%	B−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	67	77.3%	138 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	1,295	76.3%	87 min	1.16%	B
Envoy Air (this page)	523	72.3%	86 min	1.72%	C
Republic Airways	1,018	70.7%	75 min	3.63%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	131	57.7%	139 min	5.34%	D−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	2	50.0%	31 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 3.6% 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 36 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am67 flights92.4%
8am–11am54 flights90.7%
11am–2pm170 flights80.0%
2pm–5pm31 flights—
5pm–8pm201 flights56.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.9% on time, against 92.4% 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 201 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on RDU to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202531 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025107 flights67.9%
Jan–Mar 2026235 flights71.1%
Apr–Jun 2026150 flights81.2%

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 72.3% on time across 523 flights.

Envoy on RDU to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.2% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 67.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 174 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.2%. 11 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 46% of the 12,000 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
46%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
24%
Extreme weather
3%

46% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 12,157 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 92.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.72% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.96%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 646 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 77.1% on time across 521 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 523 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 RDU to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 523 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 72.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 509 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