Carrier route record
AAORD→LGA
American Airlines · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 2,948
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- 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 LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,948 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,297 at 71.0% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.0% on time across 1,297 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,801 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.3%
Every carrier on ORD to LGA, 11,625 flights
These figures cover 2,948 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.4% 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 LGA
American flew 2,948 of the 11,625 flights on ORD to LGA, about 25% of it. Its 64.7% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 71.0% to Spirit at 55.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 1,297 | 71.0% | 69 min | 8.64% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,296 | 70.3% | 98 min | 4.79% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,662 | 67.4% | 81 min | 3.41% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,948 | 64.7% | 80 min | 4.31% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.0% | 69 min | 16.30% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 330 | 55.3% | 99 min | 8.48% | D− |
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
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 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am545 flights82.7%
- 8am–11am518 flights70.2%
- 11am–2pm554 flights63.3%
- 2pm–5pm467 flights53.5%
- 5pm–8pm531 flights51.7%
- 8pm–5am333 flights63.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.7% on time, against 82.7% 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 554 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 71.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.5%. 17 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 45% of the 79,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% 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 79,000 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 78,743 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 82.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.31%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.4% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 67.5% on time across 2,947 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,948 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 4.31% 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. 2,801 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 LGA71.0%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to LGA70.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to LGA67.4%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to LGA55.3%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.