Carrier route record
AADFW→ORD
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,239
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 4,239 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,010 at 71.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to ORD runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 122 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,053 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on DFW to ORD, 6,964 flights
These figures cover 4,239 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 DFW to ORD
American flew 4,239 of the 6,964 flights on DFW to ORD, most of the route. Its 65.4% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.5% to American at 65.4%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 15 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 2,010 | 71.7% | 94 min | 1.79% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 431 | 69.4% | 95 min | 3.25% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 135 | 68.5% | 76 min | 5.19% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 129 | 66.9% | 93 min | 1.55% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,239 | 65.4% | 77 min | 3.85% | C− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.3% 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 27 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am859 flights78.3%
- 8am–11am809 flights74.9%
- 11am–2pm540 flights62.6%
- 2pm–5pm546 flights54.6%
- 5pm–8pm817 flights51.8%
- 8pm–5am668 flights64.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.8% on time, against 78.3% 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 859 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to ORD through the year
June is the worst month at 54.6% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 77.7%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 397 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.5%. 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 108,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 108,000 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 108,379 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 78.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.85%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 13.6% 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 802 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 68.3% on time across 4,233 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 4,239 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 DFW to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.85% 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. 4,053 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to DFW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DFW to ORD71.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to ORD69.4%
- Envoy Air on DFW to ORD68.5%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to ORD66.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.