Carrier route record

MQSAT→ORD

Envoy Air · San Antonio to Chicago

Flights: 352
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 5

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

Envoy on SAT 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 352 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 833 at 80.1% on time.

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

On time

76.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 342 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.3%

Every carrier on SAT to ORD, 1,968 flights

These figures cover 352 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 SAT to ORD

Envoy flew 352 of the 1,968 flights on SAT to ORD, about 18% of it. Its 76.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.1% to SkyWest at 65.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 80.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 73.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 550 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SAT to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	833	80.1%	87 min	1.20%	B
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	352	76.6%	67 min	2.84%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	101	74.7%	54 min	4.95%	C−
American Airlines	550	73.1%	74 min	2.55%	C
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	132	65.9%	61 min	4.55%	C−

United leads American by 7 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 15 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am97 flights87.4%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm90 flights74.2%
2pm–5pm20 flights—
5pm–8pm145 flights72.5%
8pm–5am—

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 87.4% of the time, against 72.5% for the evening window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 145 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on SAT to ORD through the year

Jan–Mar 2026168 flights75.6%
Apr–Jun 2026184 flights77.5%

Scale runs 65% 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 76.6% on time across 352 flights.

Split by quarter, Envoy on SAT to ORD logged 168 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 184 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 76.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 64.1%. 19 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 54% of the 5,337 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
54%
National Airspace System
23%
Extreme weather
17%
Carrier
6%

Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,337 reported delay minutes.

54% 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 5,337 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 run at 2.84%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.2% 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 1,041 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 76.8% on time across 352 flights, within half 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. 352 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 SAT to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 342 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