Carrier route record

AAORD→PIT

American Airlines · Chicago to Pittsburgh

Flights: 616
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on ORD to PIT earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 54.2% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average close to two hours. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 616 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,722 at 80.3% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on ORD to PIT runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 231 extra late arrivals.

On time

54.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 596 completed flights

Avg delay

100 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.08%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

73.6%

Every carrier on ORD to PIT, 4,029 flights

These figures cover 616 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 23.0% 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 PIT

American flew 616 of the 4,029 flights on ORD to PIT, about 15% of it. Its 54.2% on time is 19 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.3% to American at 54.2%. Two 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 80.3% of the time; United Airlines manages 74.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,318 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to PIT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	1,722	80.3%	85 min	2.56%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	138	80.0%	68 min	2.17%	B
United Airlines	1,318	74.2%	68 min	1.37%	C
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	235	68.3%	63 min	3.40%	C−
American Airlines (this page)	616	54.2%	100 min	3.08%	F−

Republic leads United by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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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 16 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm108 flights65.1%
2pm–5pm136 flights52.7%
5pm–8pm280 flights52.4%
8pm–5am92 flights48.9%

Scale runs 40% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 48.9% on time, against 65.1% for the 11am–2pm 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 280 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on ORD to PIT through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 41.8%. February is the strongest month at 66.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 25 points. March was the busiest month here, with 103 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 38.8%, a spread of 32 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on ORD to PIT runs when it is late

When American on ORD to PIT is late it tends to be very late: 137 of its 273 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 68 were two hours or more.

15+ min early120 flights20.1%
Within 15 min203 flights34.1%
15–29 min late56 flights9.4%
30–59 min late80 flights13.4%
1–2 hours late69 flights11.6%
2+ hours late68 flights11.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 596 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 284 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 33 made it up before arrival. 22 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for American on ORD to PIT

The latest arrival of the period was on 23 January 2026, 21 hours 56 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of American on ORD to PIT in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
23 January 2026	21 hours 56 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
21 June 2026	11 hours 4 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
8 December 2025	10 hours 50 minutes	Carrier
1 December 2025	8 hours 12 minutes	Extreme weather
12 June 2026	7 hours 47 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
63%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
5%

63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 27,356 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 3.08%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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

23.0% 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.

At 413 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.4% on time across 619 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 616 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 PIT

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.08% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 596 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures