Carrier route record

AAORD→ANC

American Airlines · Chicago to Anchorage

Flights: 138
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 3

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

American on ORD to ANC sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 138 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 ANC runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 137 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.8%

Every carrier on ORD to ANC, 786 flights

These figures cover 138 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 ANC

American flew 138 of the 786 flights on ORD to ANC, about 18% of it. Its 68.6% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 77.4% to American at 68.6%. One 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 ANC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlinesthin sample	210	77.4%	55 min	0.95%	B+
United Airlines	438	73.7%	49 min	0.91%	C+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	138	68.6%	61 min	0.00%	C+

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 138 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's ORD to ANC record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 68.6% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on ORD to ANC through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights67.4%
Oct–Dec 20255 flights—
Apr–Jun 202641 flights70.0%

Scale runs 60% to 75%. 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 68.6% on time across 138 flights.

Split by quarter, American on ORD to ANC logged 92 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 5 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 41 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 68.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,621 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
29%
National Airspace System
23%
Extreme weather
13%
Security
4%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,621 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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. 10.9% 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.

At 2,846 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg runs 70.1% on time across 138 flights, within 2 points 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. 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 ORD to ANC

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 68.6% 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.

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