Carrier route record

AAORD→MCI

American Airlines · Chicago to Kansas City

Flights: 339
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
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 MCI 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 339 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 567 at 77.2% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.2% on time across 567 flights.

On time

58.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 330 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.65%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.9%

Every carrier on ORD to MCI, 4,146 flights

These figures cover 339 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.8% 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 MCI

American flew 339 of the 4,146 flights on ORD to MCI, about 8% of it. Its 58.8% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.2% to American at 58.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 77.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 945 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to MCI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	567	77.2%	66 min	1.59%	B
Envoy Air	820	74.2%	60 min	3.41%	C−
United Airlines	1,435	71.6%	71 min	1.46%	C
SkyWest Airlines	945	67.9%	87 min	3.81%	C−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	40	59.0%	56 min	2.50%	D
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	339	58.8%	90 min	2.65%	D

SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.8% 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 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 339 flights.

5am–8am9 flights—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm87 flights60.5%
5pm–8pm156 flights60.8%
8pm–5am86 flights52.4%

Scale runs 45% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.4% on time, against 60.8% for the 5pm–8pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 156 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on ORD to MCI through the year

Jul–Sep 2025165 flights53.2%
Oct–Dec 202582 flights65.4%
Jan–Mar 202648 flights63.8%
Apr–Jun 202644 flights61.4%

Scale runs 45% 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 58.8% on time across 339 flights.

American on ORD to MCI did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 65.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 53.2%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 85 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 67.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 52.1%. 15 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 60% of the 12,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
60%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
3%

60% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 12,233 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 2.65%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 18.8% 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 403 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.5% on time across 342 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. 339 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 MCI

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 339 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 58.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 330 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures