Carrier route record
AAORD→CMH
American Airlines · Chicago to Columbus
- Flights
- 127
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 3%
- 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 CMH draws a D. Roughly 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 127 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,507 at 76.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.6% on time across 1,507 flights.
Key figures
On time
61.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 125 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on ORD to CMH, 4,843 flights
These figures cover 127 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 CMH
American flew 127 of the 4,843 flights on ORD to CMH, about 3% of it. Its 61.6% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.6% to American at 61.6%. One 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 76.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 535 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,507 | 76.6% | 79 min | 3.19% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,407 | 74.0% | 71 min | 2.06% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,213 | 71.4% | 70 min | 1.48% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 535 | 68.3% | 80 min | 4.86% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 67.3% | 77 min | 3.70% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 127 | 61.6% | 86 min | 1.57% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.9% 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 31 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm43 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 5pm–8pm21 flights—
- 8pm–5am60 flights48.3%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 48.3% on time, against 79.1% for the 11am–2pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 60 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to CMH through the year
- Jul–Sep 202552 flights56.9%
- Oct–Dec 202532 flights45.2%
- Apr–Jun 202643 flights79.1%
Scale runs 35% to 85%. 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 61.6% on time across 127 flights.
American on ORD to CMH did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 79.1% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 45.2%, a swing of 34 points on roughly 42 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.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 4,127 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
61% 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 4,127 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 4,127 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.57% 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. 15.2% 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.
At 296 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.6% on time across 128 flights, 24 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 24 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 127 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 CMH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 127 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 61.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 125 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CMH, every carrier
- American on CMH to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CMH76.6%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CMH74.0%
- United Airlines on ORD to CMH71.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CMH68.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.