Carrier route record
AAMSP→ORD
American Airlines · Minneapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 138
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 2%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MSP to ORD draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 2.1 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 138 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 532 at 76.1% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 532 flights.
Key figures
On time
65.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 137 completed flights
Avg delay
128 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.9%
Every carrier on MSP to ORD, 6,324 flights
These figures cover 138 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% 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 MSP to ORD
American flew 138 of the 6,324 flights on MSP to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 65.0% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.1% to Frontier at 41.7%. Two 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 76.1% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,412 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 532 | 76.1% | 87 min | 6.58% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,084 | 74.0% | 72 min | 2.86% | C |
| United Airlines | 2,398 | 69.7% | 84 min | 1.38% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 704 | 67.6% | 93 min | 3.41% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,412 | 67.3% | 66 min | 1.84% | C |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 138 | 65.0% | 128 min | 0.72% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 54.8% | 79 min | 2.33% | F |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 41.7% | 85 min | 7.69% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.6% 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 53 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am38 flights84.2%
- 8am–11am43 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm57 flights35.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 25% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 35.1% on time, against 88.1% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 57 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MSP to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202558 flights36.2%
- Oct–Dec 202534 flights82.4%
- Jan–Mar 20263 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202643 flights88.1%
Scale runs 30% 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 65.0% on time across 138 flights.
American on MSP to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 88.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 36.2%, a swing of 52 points on roughly 46 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.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 6,130 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 12%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,130 reported delay minutes.
58% 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 6,130 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 are rare at 0.72%, 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. 16.8% 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.
At 334 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 51.1% on time across 137 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 138 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 MSP to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 138 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 65.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 137 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to MSP, the return leg
- Republic Airways on MSP to ORD76.1%
- Envoy Air on MSP to ORD74.0%
- United Airlines on MSP to ORD69.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to ORD67.6%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to ORD67.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.