Carrier route record
AALGA→ORD
American Airlines · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,989
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 2,989 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,285 at 68.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on LGA to ORD runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,831 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.7%
Every carrier on LGA to ORD, 11,630 flights
These figures cover 2,989 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on LGA to ORD
American flew 2,989 of the 11,630 flights on LGA to ORD, about 26% of it. Its 69.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 69.2% 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: 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,989 | 69.2% | 89 min | 4.78% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 1,285 | 68.3% | 62 min | 9.42% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,309 | 65.8% | 97 min | 5.89% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,671 | 65.4% | 90 min | 4.24% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 64.0% | 88 min | 7.04% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.8% | 90 min | 17.39% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 9.4% 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.
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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 38 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am653 flights88.1%
- 8am–11am568 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm361 flights72.4%
- 2pm–5pm644 flights59.2%
- 5pm–8pm616 flights50.1%
- 8pm–5am147 flights62.7%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.1% on time, against 88.1% 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 653 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 78.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.5%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on LGA to ORD runs when it is late
American on LGA to ORD often beats the schedule: 1,021 of 2,831 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 871 late arrivals split 231 under half an hour, 259 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 381 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early1,021 flights36.1%
- Within 15 min939 flights33.2%
- 15–29 min late231 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late259 flights9.1%
- 1–2 hours late214 flights7.6%
- 2+ hours late167 flights5.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,831 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
111 of 734 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 248 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for American on LGA to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 February 2026, 15 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 February 2026 | 15 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 June 2026 | 14 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 March 2026 | 13 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 13 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 July 2026 | 11 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 78,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 6%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. Across 78,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 77,596 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 88.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.78%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.6% on time across 2,990 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,989 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 4.78% 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. 2,831 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
- Republic Airways on LGA to ORD68.3%
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to ORD65.8%
- United Airlines on LGA to ORD65.4%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to ORD64.0%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.