Carrier route record
AADSM→ORD
American Airlines · Des Moines to Chicago
- Flights
- 263
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DSM to ORD earns a B−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.4 hours. That rests on 263 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 565 at 77.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's DSM to ORD record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 248 completed flights
Avg delay
145 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on DSM to ORD, 3,403 flights
These figures cover 263 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 DSM to ORD
American flew 263 of the 3,403 flights on DSM to ORD, about 8% of it. Its 84.7% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 84.7% to PSA at 0.0%. 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 77.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,167 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 263 | 84.7% | 145 min | 5.70% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 565 | 77.9% | 85 min | 4.60% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 464 | 76.9% | 72 min | 2.59% | B |
| United Airlines | 943 | 73.2% | 78 min | 1.70% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,167 | 66.6% | 116 min | 6.08% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 184 min | 0.00% | F+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.1% 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 263 flights.
- 5am–8am219 flights85.9%
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm40 flights79.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 79.5% on time against 85.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 219 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DSM to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights81.8%
- Oct–Dec 202532 flights83.9%
- Jan–Mar 202648 flights88.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights85.9%
Scale runs 75% 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 84.7% on time across 263 flights.
Quarter by quarter American on DSM to ORD held fairly steady: 81.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 83.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 88.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 77.1%. 17 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 5,527 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,527 reported delay minutes.
46% 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 5,527 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 5.70%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
8.1% 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 about 2.4 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 299 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 61.8% on time across 262 flights, 23 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 23 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 263 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 DSM to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.70% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.4 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. 248 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DSM to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to DSM, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DSM to ORD77.9%
- Envoy Air on DSM to ORD76.9%
- United Airlines on DSM to ORD73.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on DSM to ORD66.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.