Carrier route record
AAORD→PVD
American Airlines · Chicago to Providence
- Flights
- 431
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- 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 PVD draws a D. Roughly one flight in three 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 431 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to PVD runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 161 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 418 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.7%
Every carrier on ORD to PVD, 1,654 flights
These figures cover 431 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.7% 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 PVD
American flew 431 of the 1,654 flights on ORD to PVD, about 26% of it. Its 61.5% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.0% to American at 61.5%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 274 | 84.0% | 64 min | 4.38% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 62 | 81.4% | 59 min | 4.84% | B− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 72.9% | 54 min | 0.84% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 768 | 65.7% | 70 min | 2.73% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 431 | 61.5% | 89 min | 2.78% | D |
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 17 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–8am—
- 8am–11am25 flights—
- 11am–2pm57 flights66.7%
- 2pm–5pm2 flights—
- 5pm–8pm292 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am55 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 66.7% 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 292 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to PVD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202596 flights57.9%
- Oct–Dec 2025110 flights68.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights57.1%
- Apr–Jun 2026135 flights60.8%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 61.5% on time across 431 flights.
American on ORD to PVD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 68.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 57.1%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 108 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 48.3%. 24 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 14,000 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
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 14,310 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.78%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 18.7% 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.
The 849 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.2% on time across 431 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 431 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 PVD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 431 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 61.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 418 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to PVD, every carrier
- American on PVD to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to PVD84.0%
- United Airlines on ORD to PVD72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to PVD65.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.