Carrier route record
AAORD→RDU
American Airlines · Chicago to Raleigh
- Flights
- 555
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to RDU 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 555 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 521 at 77.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.1% on time across 521 flights.
Key figures
On time
61.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 536 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on ORD to RDU, 3,592 flights
These figures cover 555 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.4% 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 RDU
American flew 555 of the 3,592 flights on ORD to RDU, about 15% of it. Its 61.8% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 79.1% to PSA at 50.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 79.1% | 65 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 521 | 77.1% | 54 min | 1.73% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,298 | 76.8% | 77 min | 1.00% | B |
| Republic Airways | 1,018 | 73.5% | 69 min | 2.85% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 66.4% | 137 min | 4.58% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 555 | 61.8% | 96 min | 3.42% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 85 min | 0.00% | F+ |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 77.1%, 4 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 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm50 flights65.3%
- 2pm–5pm28 flights—
- 5pm–8pm247 flights65.7%
- 8pm–5am202 flights49.7%
Scale runs 40% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.7% on time, against 65.7% for the 5pm–8pm 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 247 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to RDU through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 77.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%. 23 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 49% of the 20,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
49% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 19,666 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 7,864 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.42%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 19.4% 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.
The 646 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 82.2% on time across 553 flights, 20 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 20 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 555 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.42% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 536 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to RDU, every carrier
- American on RDU to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to RDU77.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to RDU76.8%
- Republic Airways on ORD to RDU73.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to RDU66.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.