Carrier route record
AAORD→CHS
American Airlines · Chicago to Charleston
- Flights
- 239
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- 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 CHS sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 239 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 454 at 81.1% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.1% on time across 454 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 234 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on ORD to CHS, 2,091 flights
These figures cover 239 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 CHS
American flew 239 of the 2,091 flights on ORD to CHS, about 11% of it. Its 73.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to SkyWest at 67.5%. 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 81.1% of the time; United Airlines manages 74.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 750 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airways | 454 | 81.1% | 58 min | 1.98% | B |
| Envoy Air | 562 | 74.2% | 50 min | 2.67% | C |
| United Airlines | 750 | 74.2% | 71 min | 1.60% | C |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 239 | 73.1% | 73 min | 2.09% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 85 | 67.5% | 71 min | 2.35% | C |
Republic leads United by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 12 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am154 flights78.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm55 flights66.0%
- 8pm–5am30 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 78.4% of the time, against 66.0% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 154 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to CHS through the year
- Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 20252 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202646 flights73.3%
- Apr–Jun 2026170 flights72.3%
Scale runs 65% 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 73.1% on time across 239 flights.
Split by quarter, American on ORD to CHS logged 21 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 2 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 46 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 170 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 73.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.7%. 18 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 54% of the 4,605 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
54% 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 4,605 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 4,605 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 78.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 11.5% 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 760 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 81.0% on time across 238 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 239 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 CHS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 239 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 73.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 234 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CHS, every carrier
- American on CHS to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CHS81.1%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CHS74.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to CHS74.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.