Carrier route record
AAORD→BDL
American Airlines · Chicago to Hartford
- Flights
- 461
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- 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 BDL 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 461 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 644 at 80.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to BDL runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 100 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 445 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.4%
Every carrier on ORD to BDL, 2,350 flights
These figures cover 461 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.0% 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 BDL
American flew 461 of the 2,350 flights on ORD to BDL, about 20% of it. Its 67.6% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.9% to American at 67.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.5% of the time; United Airlines manages 73.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 841 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 141 | 84.9% | 45 min | 1.42% | B |
| Republic Airways | 644 | 80.5% | 79 min | 3.42% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 263 | 77.4% | 73 min | 2.28% | B |
| United Airlines | 841 | 73.6% | 65 min | 1.31% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 461 | 67.6% | 90 min | 3.25% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 3.4% 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 18 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am54 flights80.8%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm45 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm93 flights62.9%
- 5pm–8pm183 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am81 flights68.4%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 80.8% of the time, against 62.9% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 183 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to BDL through the year
July is the worst month at 57.9% on time, 20 points below May, the best at 77.6%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 54.8%. 24 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 55% of the 13,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 13,022 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 80.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.25%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 16.0% 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 783 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 73.2% on time across 461 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 461 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 BDL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.25% 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. 445 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to BDL, every carrier
- American on BDL to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to BDL84.9%
- Republic Airways on ORD to BDL80.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to BDL77.4%
- United Airlines on ORD to BDL73.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.