Carrier route record
AAORD→GRR
American Airlines · Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 478
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to GRR 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 478 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 967 at 75.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.2% on time across 967 flights.
Key figures
On time
58.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 458 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on ORD to GRR, 4,077 flights
These figures cover 478 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.2% 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 GRR
American flew 478 of the 4,077 flights on ORD to GRR, about 12% of it. Its 58.7% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.2% 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. Envoy Air arrives on time 75.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 66.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,084 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 967 | 75.2% | 64 min | 3.93% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 881 | 71.8% | 86 min | 4.09% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 665 | 71.7% | 70 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,084 | 66.2% | 77 min | 1.01% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 478 | 58.7% | 87 min | 3.77% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 640 min | 0.00% | F+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.1% 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.
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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 26 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am43 flights78.6%
- 8am–11am52 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 5pm–8pm84 flights56.1%
- 8pm–5am296 flights53.0%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.0% on time, against 78.6% for the 5am–8am 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 296 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to GRR through the year
- Jul–Sep 202557 flights73.2%
- Oct–Dec 2025126 flights62.1%
- Jan–Mar 2026123 flights53.0%
- Apr–Jun 2026137 flights60.3%
- Jul–Sep 202635 flights37.1%
Scale runs 30% to 80%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 58.7% on time across 478 flights.
American on ORD to GRR did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 73.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 37.1%, a swing of 36 points on roughly 96 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 68.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 46.4%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on ORD to GRR runs when it is late
The 189 late arrivals split 53 under half an hour, 57 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 79 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early85 flights18.6%
- Within 15 min184 flights40.2%
- 15–29 min late53 flights11.6%
- 30–59 min late57 flights12.4%
- 1–2 hours late39 flights8.5%
- 2+ hours late40 flights8.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 458 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
41 of 212 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 18 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on ORD to GRR
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 May 2026, 14 hours 35 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across May, August, April and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 May 2026 | 14 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 August 2026 | 10 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 April 2026 | 8 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 March 2026 | 7 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 March 2026 | 6 hours 52 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 16,426 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,882 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.77%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
17.2% 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 137 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.0% on time across 480 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 478 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 GRR
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.77% 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. 458 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to GRR, every carrier
- American on GRR to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to GRR75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to GRR71.8%
- Republic Airways on ORD to GRR71.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to GRR66.2%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.