Carrier route record
AAORD→DSM
American Airlines · Chicago to Des Moines
- Flights
- 262
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- 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 DSM draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 262 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 566 at 75.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.6% on time across 566 flights.
Key figures
On time
61.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 249 completed flights
Avg delay
117 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.0%
Every carrier on ORD to DSM, 3,405 flights
These figures cover 262 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.9% 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 DSM
American flew 262 of the 3,405 flights on ORD to DSM, about 8% of it. Its 61.8% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.6% to PSA at 0.0%. 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 75.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,168 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 566 | 75.6% | 74 min | 4.95% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 465 | 75.4% | 62 min | 2.58% | B |
| United Airlines | 943 | 73.4% | 69 min | 1.70% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,168 | 67.0% | 79 min | 5.14% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 262 | 61.8% | 117 min | 4.96% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 176 min | 0.00% | F+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.1% 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 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am41 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm20 flights—
- 5pm–8pm72 flights68.1%
- 8pm–5am129 flights49.2%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.2% on time, against 80.0% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 129 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to DSM through the year
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights53.4%
- Oct–Dec 202532 flights78.1%
- Jan–Mar 202648 flights45.5%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights72.9%
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 61.8% on time across 262 flights.
American on ORD to DSM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 45.5%, a swing of 33 points on roughly 66 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 45.7%. 31 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 65% of the 11,000 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.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
65% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 11,092 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 80.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.96%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 18.9% 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 299 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 84.7% on time across 263 flights, 23 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 23 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 262 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 DSM
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 249 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DSM, every carrier
- American on DSM to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to DSM75.6%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DSM75.4%
- United Airlines on ORD to DSM73.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DSM67.0%
- 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.