Carrier route record
AACLT→ORD
American Airlines · Charlotte to Chicago
- Flights
- 3,000
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 70%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,000 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 372 at 83.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on CLT to ORD runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 66 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,903 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on CLT to ORD, 4,300 flights
These figures cover 3,000 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 CLT to ORD
American flew 3,000 of the 4,300 flights on CLT to ORD, most of the route. Its 71.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.6% to Frontier at 62.4%. 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 83.6% of the time; United Airlines manages 71.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 611 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 372 | 83.6% | 80 min | 2.96% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 160 | 81.6% | 128 min | 5.00% | B− |
| United Airlines | 611 | 71.1% | 87 min | 2.13% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,000 | 71.0% | 72 min | 2.87% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 157 | 62.4% | 122 min | 4.46% | D− |
The spread between Republic and United is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am152 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am574 flights83.3%
- 11am–2pm568 flights75.4%
- 2pm–5pm824 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm402 flights56.8%
- 8pm–5am480 flights64.5%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 84.8% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 824 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 51.7% on time, 29 points below February, the best at 80.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 300 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.4%. 10 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 60,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 60,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 60,443 reported delay minutes.
33% 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 20,000 minutes out of 60,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.87%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.9% 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 599 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 74.6% on time across 2,999 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,000 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on CLT to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.87% 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. 2,903 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to CLT, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CLT to ORD83.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on CLT to ORD81.6%
- United Airlines on CLT to ORD71.1%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to ORD62.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.