Carrier route record
AACMH→ORD
American Airlines · Columbus to Chicago
- Flights
- 128
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 3%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CMH to ORD earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 128 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,512 at 83.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's CMH to ORD record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 125 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on CMH to ORD, 4,841 flights
These figures cover 128 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on CMH to ORD
American flew 128 of the 4,841 flights on CMH to ORD, about 3% of it. Its 85.6% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 85.6% to SkyWest at 64.5%. One 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; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 535 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 128 | 85.6% | 95 min | 2.34% | A |
| Republic Airways | 1,512 | 83.6% | 68 min | 2.18% | B |
| Envoy Air | 1,399 | 74.8% | 100 min | 2.07% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 69.8% | 75 min | 1.85% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,213 | 66.3% | 85 min | 1.81% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 535 | 64.5% | 105 min | 5.79% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.8% 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 20 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am77 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm3 flights—
- 2pm–5pm43 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 73.8% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 77 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CMH to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202551 flights92.0%
- Oct–Dec 202534 flights90.9%
- Apr–Jun 202643 flights73.8%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. 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 85.6% on time across 128 flights.
American on CMH to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 92.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 73.8%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 43 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.
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 1,707 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
39% 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 1,707 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 1,707 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.4% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 296 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 61.6% on time across 127 flights, 24 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 24 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 128 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 CMH to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 128 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 85.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 125 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to CMH, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CMH to ORD83.6%
- Envoy Air on CMH to ORD74.8%
- United Airlines on CMH to ORD66.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on CMH to ORD64.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.