Carrier route record
AAORD→LGA
American Airlines · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 2,990
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- 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 LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,990 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,284 at 71.5% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.5% on time across 1,284 flights.
Key figures
On time
65.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,827 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.6%
Every carrier on ORD to LGA, 11,630 flights
These figures cover 2,990 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 LGA
American flew 2,990 of the 11,630 flights on ORD to LGA, about 26% of it. Its 65.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 66.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 71.5% to Spirit at 48.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,284 | 71.5% | 69 min | 8.64% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,309 | 68.7% | 96 min | 5.89% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,671 | 66.1% | 83 min | 3.98% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,990 | 65.6% | 80 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.0% | 69 min | 16.30% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 48.8% | 101 min | 9.86% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 8.6% 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.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on ORD to LGA
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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 31 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am563 flights83.5%
- 8am–11am520 flights71.2%
- 11am–2pm568 flights64.3%
- 2pm–5pm505 flights53.4%
- 5pm–8pm500 flights52.5%
- 8pm–5am334 flights64.7%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.5% on time, against 83.5% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 568 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to LGA through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 46.5%. June is the strongest month at 73.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. May was the busiest month here, with 306 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.7%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on ORD to LGA runs when it is late
The 973 late arrivals split 252 under half an hour, 277 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 444 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early620 flights21.9%
- Within 15 min1,234 flights43.7%
- 15–29 min late252 flights8.9%
- 30–59 min late277 flights9.8%
- 1–2 hours late252 flights8.9%
- 2+ hours late192 flights6.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,827 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
124 of 917 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 180 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 LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for American on ORD to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 January 2026, 16 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 January 2026 | 16 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 July 2026 | 15 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 May 2026 | 9 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 8 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 August 2026 | 8 hours 28 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 77,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 77,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 77,431 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.65%, 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
15.7% 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 733 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 69.2% on time across 2,989 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,990 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on ORD to LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.65% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 2,827 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to LGA, every carrier
- American on LGA to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to LGA71.5%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to LGA68.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to LGA66.1%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to LGA48.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.