Carrier route record
AAORD→SAT
American Airlines · Chicago to San Antonio
- Flights
- 497
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- 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 SAT draws a D. About 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 497 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 410 at 76.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on ORD to SAT runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 130 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 488 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on ORD to SAT, 2,001 flights
These figures cover 497 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% 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 SAT
American flew 497 of the 2,001 flights on ORD to SAT, about 25% of it. Its 64.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.3% to American at 64.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 101 | 82.3% | 62 min | 3.96% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 79.0% | 61 min | 3.85% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 410 | 76.3% | 62 min | 2.44% | B |
| United Airlines | 889 | 74.0% | 73 min | 0.90% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 497 | 64.3% | 86 min | 1.81% | D |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 76.3%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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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 33 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am150 flights71.8%
- 11am–2pm11 flights—
- 2pm–5pm109 flights70.4%
- 5pm–8pm106 flights73.1%
- 8pm–5am121 flights40.2%
Scale runs 30% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 40.2% on time, against 73.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 150 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to SAT through the year
July is the worst month at 47.4% on time, 31 points below November, the best at 78.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 81 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 72.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.1%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on ORD to SAT runs when it is late
American on ORD to SAT often beats the schedule: 165 of 488 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 174 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 54 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 82 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early165 flights33.8%
- Within 15 min149 flights30.5%
- 15–29 min late38 flights7.8%
- 30–59 min late54 flights11.1%
- 1–2 hours late47 flights9.6%
- 2+ hours late35 flights7.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 488 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
54 of 212 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on ORD to SAT
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 August 2026, 10 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across August, June, July and November, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 August 2026 | 10 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 June 2026 | 9 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 July 2026 | 9 hours 48 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 8 November 2025 | 7 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 July 2026 | 5 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 14,904 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
16.8% 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.
The 1,041 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.2% on time across 500 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 497 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 SAT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 497 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 64.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to SAT, every carrier
- American on SAT to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to SAT82.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to SAT79.0%
- Envoy Air on ORD to SAT76.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to SAT74.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.