Carrier route record
AAGEG→ORD
American Airlines · Spokane to Chicago
- Flights
- 351
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on GEG to ORD draws a D+. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 351 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on GEG to ORD runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 184 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 346 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.2%
Every carrier on GEG to ORD, 744 flights
These figures cover 351 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.8% 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 GEG to ORD
American flew 351 of the 744 flights on GEG to ORD, about 47% of it. Its 59.2% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 64.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 100.0% to American at 59.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 391 | 68.6% | 55 min | 1.53% | C |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 351 | 59.2% | 100 min | 0.57% | D+ |
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 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am37 flights89.2%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm269 flights54.2%
- 2pm–5pm44 flights65.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. 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 54.2% on time against 89.2% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 269 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on GEG to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025104 flights53.9%
- Oct–Dec 2025106 flights63.8%
- Jan–Mar 202651 flights48.0%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights66.3%
Scale runs 40% to 70%. 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 59.2% on time across 351 flights.
American on GEG to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 66.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 48.0%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 88 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 69.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 46.2%. 23 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 45% of the 14,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
45% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 14,102 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 5,102 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 18.8% 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.
The 1,498 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 63.7% on time across 352 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 351 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 GEG to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 351 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 59.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 346 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- GEG to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to GEG, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on GEG to ORD68.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.