Carrier route record
AAPBI→ORD
American Airlines · West Palm Beach to Chicago
- Flights
- 796
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PBI to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 796 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on PBI to ORD runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 103 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 767 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.0%
Every carrier on PBI to ORD, 1,297 flights
These figures cover 796 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.0% 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 PBI to ORD
American flew 796 of the 1,297 flights on PBI to ORD, most of the route. Its 67.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 67.3% to United at 66.5%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 796 | 67.3% | 106 min | 2.64% | C |
| United Airlines | 501 | 66.5% | 90 min | 0.80% | C+ |
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–8am87 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am130 flights90.7%
- 11am–2pm197 flights66.3%
- 2pm–5pm66 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm315 flights54.4%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.4% on time, against 90.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 315 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PBI to ORD through the year
August is the worst month at 47.1% on time, 32 points below December, the best at 79.3%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.9%. 18 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 27,000 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
- 30%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 26,589 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 90.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.64%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 16.0% 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 1,144 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 66.0% on time across 796 flights, within about 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. 796 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 PBI to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 796 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 67.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 767 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.