Carrier route record
AAORD→PDX
American Airlines · Chicago to Portland
- Flights
- 861
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to PDX draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 861 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 506 at 72.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to PDX runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 150 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 847 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on ORD to PDX, 2,761 flights
These figures cover 861 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 PDX
American flew 861 of the 2,761 flights on ORD to PDX, about 31% of it. Its 62.6% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 72.8% to American at 62.6%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 506 | 72.8% | 50 min | 1.19% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,394 | 72.6% | 61 min | 0.43% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 861 | 62.6% | 71 min | 1.39% | D |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 72.8%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am119 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am152 flights74.0%
- 11am–2pm208 flights65.4%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm80 flights57.7%
- 8pm–5am302 flights47.8%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.8% on time, against 83.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 302 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to PDX through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 83.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 68.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 55.6%. 13 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 50% of the 23,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 23,000 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 22,552 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 83.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
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. 13.6% 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 1,739 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.0% on time across 863 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 861 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 PDX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 861 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 62.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 847 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to PDX, every carrier
- American on PDX to ORD, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on ORD to PDX72.8%
- United Airlines on ORD to PDX72.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) 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.