Carrier route record

AAORD→SAV

American Airlines · Chicago to Savannah

Flights: 182
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
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 SAV sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 182 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to SAV runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 50 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 179 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.0%

Every carrier on ORD to SAV, 1,561 flights

These figures cover 182 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on ORD to SAV

American flew 182 of the 1,561 flights on ORD to SAV, about 12% of it. Its 72.6% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.6% to SkyWest at 68.2%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to SAV
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	275	82.6%	65 min	1.82%	B
United Airlines	735	79.9%	78 min	0.82%	B+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	182	72.6%	82 min	1.10%	C
Republic Airwaysthin sample	168	69.4%	71 min	4.17%	C−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	201	68.2%	89 min	2.99%	C

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 182 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's ORD to SAV record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 72.6% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on ORD to SAV through the year

Jul–Sep 202596 flights68.8%
Oct–Dec 202534 flights79.4%
Jan–Mar 202610 flights—
Apr–Jun 202642 flights76.2%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. 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 72.6% on time across 182 flights.

American on ORD to SAV did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 79.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 68.8%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 61 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.

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 4,020 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
67%
Carrier
23%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
1%

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 4,020 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 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 4,020 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 74.5% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 773 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 runs 72.8% on time across 183 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 182 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 SAV

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 182 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 72.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures