Carrier route record
AALGA→ORD
American Airlines · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,947
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LGA to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% 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 2,947 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,296 at 68.6% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 68.6% on time across 2,296 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,806 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.3%
Every carrier on LGA to ORD, 11,625 flights
These figures cover 2,947 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 LGA to ORD
American flew 2,947 of the 11,625 flights on LGA to ORD, about 25% of it. Its 67.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 68.6% to SkyWest at 61.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,296 | 68.6% | 96 min | 4.75% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 1,298 | 68.6% | 62 min | 9.32% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,947 | 67.5% | 94 min | 4.48% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,662 | 66.7% | 88 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 330 | 62.1% | 95 min | 7.27% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.8% | 90 min | 17.39% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 9.3% 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 44 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am652 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am564 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm356 flights71.1%
- 2pm–5pm635 flights59.1%
- 5pm–8pm652 flights44.3%
- 8pm–5am88 flights57.0%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.3% on time, against 87.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 652 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LGA to ORD through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 56.7%. January is the strongest month at 80.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. May was the busiest month here, with 306 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.2%. 22 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 48% of the 86,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 86,000 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 86,018 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 87.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.48%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.0% 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 733 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 64.7% on time across 2,948 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 2,947 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 LGA to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.48% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 2,806 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to ORD68.6%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ORD68.6%
- United Airlines on LGA to ORD66.7%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to ORD62.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.