Carrier route record
AAORD→PIT
American Airlines · Chicago to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 603
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to PIT earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.0% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 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 603 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,628 at 81.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to PIT runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 226 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
55.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 584 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on ORD to PIT, 3,948 flights
These figures cover 603 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.8% 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 PIT
American flew 603 of the 3,948 flights on ORD to PIT, about 15% of it. Its 55.0% on time is 20 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.2% to American at 55.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 189 | 83.2% | 64 min | 2.12% | B |
| Republic Airways | 1,628 | 81.4% | 80 min | 2.27% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,291 | 75.8% | 66 min | 1.01% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 237 | 68.5% | 66 min | 2.11% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 603 | 55.0% | 105 min | 2.99% | D |
No carrier stands out. Republic tops the table at 81.4%, 6 points 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 16 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm46 flights64.4%
- 2pm–5pm137 flights52.3%
- 5pm–8pm327 flights56.3%
- 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 64.4% 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 327 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to PIT through the year
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 71.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 40.8%. 31 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 67% of the 27,000 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.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
67% 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 27,000 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 27,471 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.99%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 22.8% 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 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 69.9% on time across 604 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. 603 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 2.99% 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. 584 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to PIT, every carrier
- American on PIT to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to PIT83.2%
- Republic Airways on ORD to PIT81.4%
- United Airlines on ORD to PIT75.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to PIT68.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) 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.