Carrier route record
MQSAT→ORD
Envoy Air · San Antonio to Chicago
- Flights
- 410
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 410 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 889 at 78.9% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.
Key figures
On time
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 397 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.4%
Every carrier on SAT to ORD, 2,004 flights
These figures cover 410 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Envoy against every carrier on SAT to ORD
Envoy flew 410 of the 2,004 flights on SAT to ORD, about 20% of it. Its 76.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.9% to SkyWest at 68.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 889 | 78.9% | 87 min | 1.12% | B |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 410 | 76.1% | 69 min | 3.17% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 101 | 74.7% | 54 min | 4.95% | C− |
| American Airlines | 500 | 74.2% | 87 min | 1.80% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 68.4% | 52 min | 5.77% | C− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 78.9%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am97 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm90 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm20 flights—
- 5pm–8pm203 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 203 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%
- Jul–Sep 202658 flights72.7%
Scale runs 65% to 85%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 76.1% on time across 410 flights.
Quarter by quarter Envoy on SAT to ORD held fairly steady: 75.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 77.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 72.7% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 63.6%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Envoy on SAT to ORD runs when it is late
Envoy on SAT to ORD often beats the schedule: 160 of 397 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 95 late arrivals split 37 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 38 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early160 flights40.3%
- Within 15 min142 flights35.8%
- 15–29 min late37 flights9.3%
- 30–59 min late20 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 397 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 80 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 29 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for Envoy on SAT to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 May 2026, 7 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 May 2026 | 7 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 January 2026 | 4 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 4 hours 17 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 31 March 2026 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 2 February 2026 | 3 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 6,512 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 18%Extreme weather
- 5%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,512 reported delay minutes.
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,512 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.17%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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.
The return leg runs 76.3% on time across 410 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. 410 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 3.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 397 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAT to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to SAT, the return leg
- United Airlines on SAT to ORD78.9%
- Republic Airways on SAT to ORD74.7%
- American Airlines on SAT to ORD74.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAT to ORD68.4%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.