Carrier route record

AAABQ→ORD

American Airlines · Albuquerque to Chicago

Flights: 299
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 5

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

American on ABQ to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 299 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ABQ to ORD runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 101 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 289 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.34%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.3%

Every carrier on ABQ to ORD, 1,176 flights

These figures cover 299 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% 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

American against every carrier on ABQ to ORD

American flew 299 of the 1,176 flights on ABQ to ORD, about 25% of it. Its 67.5% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 88.1% to American at 67.5%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on ABQ to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	59	88.1%	55 min	0.00%	A+
Envoy Airthin sample	317	87.7%	65 min	1.58%	A
United Airlines	392	79.1%	96 min	1.79%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	109	72.6%	56 min	1.83%	C
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	299	67.5%	108 min	1.34%	C

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am50 flights87.5%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm161 flights63.2%
2pm–5pm88 flights64.0%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

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

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 63.2% on time against 87.5% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 161 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on ABQ to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025117 flights66.7%
Oct–Dec 202531 flights80.6%
Jan–Mar 202648 flights70.8%
Apr–Jun 2026103 flights62.6%

Scale runs 55% 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 67.5% on time across 299 flights.

American on ABQ to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 62.6%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 75 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.5%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American 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 10,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
6%

41% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 10,182 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,158 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 2.01%.

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. 13.1% 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 1,118 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 67.0% on time across 298 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. 299 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 American on ABQ to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 299 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 67.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 289 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