Carrier route record
AAORD→SLC
American Airlines · Chicago to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 969
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- 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 SLC draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 969 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,011 at 71.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to SLC runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 134 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 948 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.8%
Every carrier on ORD to SLC, 3,198 flights
These figures cover 969 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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 SLC
American flew 969 of the 3,198 flights on ORD to SLC, about 30% of it. Its 64.2% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 71.8% to SkyWest at 56.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,011 | 71.8% | 105 min | 0.79% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 1,069 | 71.7% | 64 min | 0.84% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 969 | 64.2% | 69 min | 1.96% | D |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 36 | 61.1% | 48 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 113 | 56.2% | 87 min | 0.88% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 71.8%, half a point 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 25 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–11am325 flights68.4%
- 11am–2pm287 flights65.6%
- 2pm–5pm52 flights76.9%
- 5pm–8pm184 flights58.5%
- 8pm–5am121 flights52.2%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 76.9% for the 2pm–5pm 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 325 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to SLC through the year
January is the weak month at 52.5% on time, against 78.9% in November. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 104 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.0%. 17 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 23,000 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
- 13%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 23,429 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
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. 14.2% 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 1,250 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 74.0% on time across 968 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. 969 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 SLC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 969 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 64.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 948 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to SLC, every carrier
- American on SLC to ORD, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to SLC71.8%
- United Airlines on ORD to SLC71.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to SLC56.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.