Carrier route record
AAORD→MSP
American Airlines · Chicago to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 137
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 2%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to MSP earns an F+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 51.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 26 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average close to two hours. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 137 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,084 at 74.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 74.2% on time across 1,084 flights.
Key figures
On time
51.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 135 completed flights
Avg delay
118 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on ORD to MSP, 6,324 flights
These figures cover 137 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 24.4% 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 MSP
American flew 137 of the 6,324 flights on ORD to MSP, about 2% of it. Its 51.1% on time is 19 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number seven of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 74.2% to Frontier at 50.0%. Two 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 74.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 702 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,084 | 74.2% | 66 min | 2.77% | C |
| Republic Airways | 533 | 72.0% | 75 min | 6.19% | C− |
| United Airlines | 2,401 | 69.5% | 70 min | 1.04% | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,411 | 69.0% | 96 min | 1.98% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 68.3% | 81 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 702 | 67.1% | 99 min | 3.42% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 137 | 51.1% | 118 min | 0.73% | F+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 50.0% | 52 min | 7.69% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.2% 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 137 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm59 flights44.1%
- 5pm–8pm6 flights—
- 8pm–5am72 flights52.9%
Scale runs 35% to 60%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 52.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 9 points.
Across the year
American on ORD to MSP through the year
- Jul–Sep 202557 flights42.1%
- Oct–Dec 202535 flights62.9%
- Jan–Mar 20262 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202643 flights51.2%
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 51.1% on time across 137 flights.
American on ORD to MSP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 62.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 42.1%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 46 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.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 7,790 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
51% 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 7,790 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 7,790 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 2,820 of the 7,790 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 24.4% 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.
At 334 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.0% on time across 138 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 137 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 MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 137 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 51.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 135 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSP, every carrier
- American on MSP to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSP74.2%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSP72.0%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSP69.5%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to MSP69.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSP67.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.