Carrier route record

AACLE→ORD

American Airlines · Cleveland to Chicago

Flights: 420
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 5

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

American on CLE to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 420 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,173 at 77.0% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.0% on time across 2,173 flights.

On time

74.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 398 completed flights

Avg delay

118 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.6%

Every carrier on CLE to ORD, 4,897 flights

These figures cover 420 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 CLE to ORD

American flew 420 of the 4,897 flights on CLE to ORD, about 9% of it. Its 74.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.0% to SkyWest at 68.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.0% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 947 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on CLE to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	2,173	77.0%	75 min	1.47%	B
Republic Airways	543	76.6%	73 min	6.63%	B−
American Airlines (this page)	420	74.1%	118 min	5.00%	C−
Envoy Air	814	73.7%	73 min	4.55%	C−
SkyWest Airlines	947	68.5%	104 min	4.44%	C−

Republic Airways cancels 6.6% 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 28 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am161 flights85.0%
8am–11am85 flights81.2%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm44 flights71.4%
5pm–8pm130 flights57.3%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.3% on time, against 85.0% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 161 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on CLE to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025106 flights76.0%
Oct–Dec 202559 flights86.2%
Jan–Mar 202658 flights58.2%
Apr–Jun 2026197 flights74.1%

Scale runs 50% 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 74.1% on time across 420 flights.

American on CLE to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 86.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 58.2%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 105 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 67.2%. 12 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

38% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 12,168 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 4,587 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 5.00%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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 316 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 56.4% on time across 422 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 420 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 CLE to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.00% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 398 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