Carrier route record

AAORD→ABQ

American Airlines · Chicago to Albuquerque

Flights: 298
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on ORD to ABQ draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 298 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to ABQ runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 106 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 294 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.01%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.8%

Every carrier on ORD to ABQ, 1,178 flights

These figures cover 298 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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 ORD to ABQ

American flew 298 of the 1,178 flights on ORD to ABQ, about 25% of it. Its 67.0% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 78.3% to SkyWest at 58.3%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to ABQ
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	60	78.3%	79 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	392	75.3%	60 min	0.77%	B+
Envoy Airthin sample	320	71.5%	71 min	1.25%	C
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	298	67.0%	63 min	1.01%	C
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	108	58.3%	80 min	4.63%	D−

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 25 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–8am—
8am–11am159 flights72.8%
11am–2pm91 flights65.9%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am47 flights47.7%

Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.7% on time, against 72.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 159 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on ORD to ABQ through the year

Jul–Sep 2025116 flights64.6%
Oct–Dec 202531 flights74.2%
Jan–Mar 202648 flights68.8%
Apr–Jun 2026103 flights66.7%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 67.0% on time across 298 flights.

Quarter by quarter American on ORD to ABQ held fairly steady: 64.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 74.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 68.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 66.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 72.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.1%. 13 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 67% of the 6,066 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
67%
Carrier
20%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
1%

67% 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 6,066 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 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 6,066 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 72.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.

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. 11.9% 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 1,118 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 67.5% on time across 299 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 298 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 ORD to ABQ

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 298 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 67.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 294 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures