Carrier route record
AAORD→AUS
American Airlines · Chicago to Austin
- Flights
- 1,190
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to AUS draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,190 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to AUS runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 106 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,156 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on ORD to AUS, 3,169 flights
These figures cover 1,190 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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 AUS
American flew 1,190 of the 3,169 flights on ORD to AUS, about 38% of it. Its 67.0% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.9% to Southwest at 62.3%. Four 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,471 | 77.9% | 67 min | 1.09% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 88 | 73.3% | 68 min | 2.27% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 95 | 68.9% | 54 min | 5.26% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,190 | 67.0% | 82 min | 2.86% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 66.1% | 122 min | 5.08% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 62.3% | 60 min | 0.97% | 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 35 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–8am80 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am272 flights78.7%
- 11am–2pm181 flights66.5%
- 2pm–5pm241 flights65.8%
- 5pm–8pm154 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am262 flights52.2%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 87.0% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 272 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to AUS through the year
June is the worst month at 58.1% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 81.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 126 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.0%. 14 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 53% of the 31,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
53% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 31,344 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 87.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 14.2% 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 977 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 69.8% on time across 1,190 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,190 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on ORD to AUS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,156 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to AUS, every carrier
- American on AUS to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to AUS77.9%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to AUS66.1%
- Southwest Airlines on ORD to AUS62.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.