Carrier route record
AAMSY→ORD
American Airlines · New Orleans to Chicago
- Flights
- 400
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MSY to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 2.3 hours behind schedule. That rests on 400 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 842 at 82.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on MSY to ORD runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 73 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 384 completed flights
Avg delay
137 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.1%
Every carrier on MSY to ORD, 2,400 flights
These figures cover 400 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 MSY to ORD
American flew 400 of the 2,400 flights on MSY to ORD, about 17% of it. Its 70.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.3% to Frontier at 63.6%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 842 | 82.3% | 79 min | 1.19% | B |
| Envoy Air | 465 | 82.1% | 68 min | 1.72% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 336 | 78.0% | 73 min | 2.68% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 72.9% | 61 min | 1.53% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 215 | 70.5% | 67 min | 6.51% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 400 | 70.3% | 137 min | 2.25% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 63.6% | 67 min | 0.00% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 82.3%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 36 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–8am212 flights77.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm130 flights70.2%
- 2pm–5pm7 flights—
- 5pm–8pm51 flights41.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 41.7% on time, against 77.6% 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 212 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MSY to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202537 flights55.9%
- Oct–Dec 2025112 flights77.3%
- Jan–Mar 2026126 flights74.6%
- Apr–Jun 2026125 flights63.6%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. 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 70.3% on time across 400 flights.
American on MSY to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 77.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 55.9%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 100 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%. 18 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. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 16,000 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 8,358 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,562 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.25% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.75%.
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. 13.5% 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 837 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 62.6% on time across 401 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 400 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 MSY to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 400 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 70.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 384 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to MSY, the return leg
- United Airlines on MSY to ORD82.3%
- Envoy Air on MSY to ORD82.1%
- Republic Airways on MSY to ORD78.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSY to ORD72.9%
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to ORD70.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- 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.