Carrier route record
AAORD→JFK
American Airlines · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 541
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- 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 JFK 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 541 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 633 at 78.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on ORD to JFK runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 168 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 511 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.18%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.5%
Every carrier on ORD to JFK, 2,135 flights
These figures cover 541 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.2% 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 JFK
American flew 541 of the 2,135 flights on ORD to JFK, about 25% of it. Its 60.5% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 92.3% to Frontier at 59.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 14 | 92.3% | 221 min | 7.14% | A− |
| JetBlue Airways | 633 | 78.2% | 105 min | 7.90% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 830 | 77.5% | 75 min | 3.73% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 541 | 60.5% | 98 min | 5.18% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 117 | 59.8% | 100 min | 4.27% | D− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 7.9% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 541 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am89 flights65.9%
- 11am–2pm132 flights58.6%
- 2pm–5pm319 flights59.9%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 58.6% on time against 65.9% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 319 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to JFK through the year
- Jul–Sep 202528 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025230 flights60.4%
- Jan–Mar 2026102 flights63.8%
- Apr–Jun 2026119 flights60.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights45.5%
Scale runs 35% to 70%. 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 60.5% on time across 541 flights.
American on ORD to JFK did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 63.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 45.5%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 135 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 70.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 45.9%, a spread of 25 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on ORD to JFK runs when it is late
The 202 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 68 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 93 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early118 flights23.1%
- Within 15 min191 flights37.4%
- 15–29 min late41 flights8.0%
- 30–59 min late68 flights13.3%
- 1–2 hours late48 flights9.4%
- 2+ hours late45 flights8.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 511 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 185 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 20 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 37 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at JFK.
The worst days
Worst days for American on ORD to JFK
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 November 2025, 19 hours 28 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 November 2025 | 19 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 October 2025 | 13 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 August 2026 | 13 hours 10 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 6 September 2025 | 9 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 May 2026 | 8 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 19,800 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 6,540 minutes out of 20,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.18%, against 1.89% 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
18.2% 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.
The 740 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.1% on time across 542 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 541 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 JFK
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.18% 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. 511 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to JFK, every carrier
- American on JFK to ORD, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on ORD to JFK78.2%
- Republic Airways on ORD to JFK77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to JFK59.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) 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.