Carrier route record
AAORD→GRR
American Airlines · Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 531
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- 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 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 531 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 929 at 76.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 929 flights.
Key figures
On time
58.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 511 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.0%
Every carrier on ORD to GRR, 4,034 flights
These figures cover 531 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.2% 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 GRR
American flew 531 of the 4,034 flights on ORD to GRR, about 13% of it. Its 58.7% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 76.1% 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 76.1% of the time; United Airlines manages 66.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,073 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 929 | 76.1% | 63 min | 3.88% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 661 | 74.5% | 71 min | 3.03% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 838 | 70.8% | 89 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,073 | 66.9% | 78 min | 1.21% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 531 | 58.7% | 85 min | 3.39% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 640 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.9% 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 27 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am43 flights78.6%
- 8am–11am78 flights75.6%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm4 flights—
- 5pm–8pm90 flights56.8%
- 8pm–5am315 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 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 315 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to GRR through the year
July is the worst month at 34.4% on time, 39 points below September, the best at 73.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 81 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 69.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 44.0%. 26 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 52% of the 18,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
52% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 17,926 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,262 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.39%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 17.2% 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 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 75.6% on time across 532 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 531 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 3.39% 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. 511 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 GRR76.1%
- Republic Airways on ORD to GRR74.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to GRR70.8%
- United Airlines on ORD to GRR66.9%
- 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.