Carrier route record
AAORD→TUS
American Airlines · Chicago to Tucson
- Flights
- 482
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to TUS draws a C. 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 482 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to TUS runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 473 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.9%
Every carrier on ORD to TUS, 1,041 flights
These figures cover 482 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.6% 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 TUS
American flew 482 of the 1,041 flights on ORD to TUS, about 46% of it. Its 66.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 71.8% to Envoy at 57.9%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 463 | 71.8% | 72 min | 1.94% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 71.4% | 88 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 482 | 66.2% | 84 min | 1.87% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 19 | 57.9% | 61 min | 0.00% | 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 36 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–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am291 flights77.5%
- 11am–2pm33 flights51.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm37 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am120 flights41.2%
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 41.2% on time, against 77.5% for the 8am–11am 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 291 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to TUS through the year
July is the worst month at 43.9% on time, 43 points below November, the best at 86.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 57.4%. 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 56% of the 13,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
56% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 13,395 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 77.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.87% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 14.6% 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 1,437 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 73.3% on time across 481 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 482 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 TUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 482 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 66.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 473 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.