Carrier route record
AACHS→ORD
American Airlines · Charleston to Chicago
- Flights
- 238
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CHS to ORD lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 238 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 562 at 80.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on CHS 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
81.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 232 completed flights
Avg delay
118 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on CHS to ORD, 2,091 flights
These figures cover 238 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
American against every carrier on CHS to ORD
American flew 238 of the 2,091 flights on CHS to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 81.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to SkyWest at 69.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.1% of the time; Republic Airways manages 70.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 456 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 238 | 81.0% | 118 min | 1.68% | B |
| Envoy Air | 562 | 80.1% | 75 min | 2.67% | B |
| United Airlines | 749 | 77.1% | 73 min | 2.00% | B |
| Republic Airways | 456 | 70.5% | 52 min | 3.07% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 85 | 69.1% | 124 min | 4.71% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 3.1% 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 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 11 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am71 flights88.2%
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm148 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% 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 77.2% on time against 88.2% 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 148 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CHS to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 20252 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202646 flights70.5%
- Apr–Jun 2026169 flights84.8%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 81.0% on time across 238 flights.
Split by quarter, American on CHS to ORD logged 21 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 2 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 46 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 169 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 81.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.7%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 5,178 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
37% 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 5,178 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 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 5,178 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 2,477 of the 5,178 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.68% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.84%.
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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 760 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 73.1% on time across 239 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 238 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 CHS to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 238 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 81.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 232 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CHS to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to CHS, the return leg
- Envoy Air on CHS to ORD80.1%
- United Airlines on CHS to ORD77.1%
- Republic Airways on CHS to ORD70.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.