Carrier route record

MQSDF→ORD

Envoy Air · Louisville to Chicago

Flights: 416
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 SDF to ORD lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 416 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,736 at 82.5% on time.

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

On time

77.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 408 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.44%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.0%

Every carrier on SDF to ORD, 2,807 flights

These figures cover 416 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 SDF to ORD

Envoy flew 416 of the 2,807 flights on SDF to ORD, about 15% of it. Its 77.5% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.5% to United at 50.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.5% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 70.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 645 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SDF to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	1,736	82.5%	67 min	2.71%	B
Envoy Air (this page)	416	77.5%	78 min	1.44%	B
SkyWest Airlines	645	70.9%	96 min	3.88%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	3	66.7%	48 min	0.00%	C+
United Airlinesthin sample	6	50.0%	54 min	0.00%	F+

SkyWest Airlines 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 35 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am24 flights—
8am–11am84 flights92.9%
11am–2pm76 flights74.3%
2pm–5pm120 flights86.6%
5pm–8pm112 flights58.3%
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: 58.3% on time, against 92.9% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 120 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on SDF to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025232 flights77.5%
Oct–Dec 202584 flights81.0%
Jan–Mar 202669 flights72.7%
Apr–Jun 202631 flights77.4%

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 77.5% on time across 416 flights.

Quarter by quarter Envoy on SDF to ORD held fairly steady: 77.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 72.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 77.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.0%. 17 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 43% of the 7,182 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
43%
National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
12%
Extreme weather
7%

43% 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 7,182 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 7,182 reported delay minutes.

38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,708 minutes out of 7,182, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.48%.

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. 9.6% 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.

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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.1% on time across 415 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. 416 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 SDF to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 416 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 77.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 408 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