Carrier route record
AAOMA→ORD
American Airlines · Omaha to Chicago
- Flights
- 261
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on OMA to ORD lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.1 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 261 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 855 at 75.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on OMA to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 254 completed flights
Avg delay
126 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on OMA to ORD, 3,025 flights
These figures cover 261 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 OMA to ORD
American flew 261 of the 3,025 flights on OMA to ORD, about 9% of it. Its 76.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 76.0% to PSA at 71.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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)thin sample | 261 | 76.0% | 126 min | 2.30% | B |
| Envoy Air | 855 | 75.6% | 69 min | 3.39% | B− |
| United Airlines | 1,347 | 74.6% | 92 min | 1.71% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 170 | 72.7% | 73 min | 2.94% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 384 | 71.5% | 80 min | 3.91% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 71.4% | 55 min | 12.50% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.9% 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 46 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am210 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm45 flights38.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 38.6% on time, against 84.3% 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 210 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on OMA to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025118 flights70.8%
- Oct–Dec 202599 flights77.6%
- Apr–Jun 202644 flights86.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 76.0% on time across 261 flights.
American on OMA to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.8%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 87 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 87.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.1%. 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 49% of the 7,666 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
49% 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 7,666 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 7,666 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 84.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
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. 9.1% 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 416 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 50.0% on time across 260 flights, 26 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 26 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 261 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 OMA to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 261 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 76.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 254 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- OMA to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to OMA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on OMA to ORD75.6%
- United Airlines on OMA to ORD74.6%
- Republic Airways on OMA to ORD72.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on OMA to ORD71.5%
- 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.