Carrier route record

AAORD→CLE

American Airlines · Chicago to Cleveland

Flights: 396
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 5

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

American on ORD to CLE draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two 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 396 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 583 at 76.2% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.2% on time across 583 flights.

On time

59.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 382 completed flights

Avg delay

98 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.54%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.8%

Every carrier on ORD to CLE, 4,893 flights

These figures cover 396 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on ORD to CLE

American flew 396 of the 4,893 flights on ORD to CLE, about 8% of it. Its 59.2% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.2% to American at 59.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 853 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	583	76.2%	69 min	5.32%	B−
Envoy Air	879	73.1%	62 min	4.10%	C−
United Airlines	2,182	71.8%	78 min	1.28%	C
SkyWest Airlines	853	67.3%	87 min	3.40%	C−
American Airlines (this page)	396	59.2%	98 min	3.54%	D−

Republic Airways cancels 5.3% 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.

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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 29 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am44 flights80.5%
11am–2pm19 flights—
2pm–5pm115 flights63.4%
5pm–8pm157 flights52.3%
8pm–5am61 flights51.7%

Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.7% on time, against 80.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 157 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on ORD to CLE through the year

Jul–Sep 202545 flights55.6%
Oct–Dec 202560 flights59.3%
Jan–Mar 202658 flights72.7%
Apr–Jun 2026198 flights58.1%
Jul–Sep 202635 flights46.9%

Scale runs 40% to 80%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 59.2% on time across 396 flights.

American on ORD to CLE did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 72.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 46.9%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 79 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 65.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 15 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on ORD to CLE runs when it is late

The 156 late arrivals split 34 under half an hour, 46 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 76 an hour or more.

15+ min early62 flights16.2%
Within 15 min164 flights42.9%
15–29 min late34 flights8.9%
30–59 min late46 flights12.0%
1–2 hours late36 flights9.4%
2+ hours late40 flights10.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 382 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

23 of 160 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 19 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for American on ORD to CLE

The latest arrival of the period was on 21 July 2026, 13 hours 56 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of American on ORD to CLE in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
21 July 2026	13 hours 56 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
21 September 2025	13 hours 25 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
15 April 2026	10 hours 16 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 May 2026	9 hours 47 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
13 October 2025	8 hours 28 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
65%
Carrier
25%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
1%

65% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 to one. The split is drawn from 15,217 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 80.5% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.54%, against 1.89% 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

19.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 316 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.0% on time across 395 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 396 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 CLE

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.54% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 382 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures