Carrier route record
AAPIT→ORD
American Airlines · Pittsburgh to Chicago
- Flights
- 604
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PIT to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 604 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,629 at 84.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on PIT to ORD runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 584 completed flights
Avg delay
113 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.6%
Every carrier on PIT to ORD, 3,950 flights
These figures cover 604 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 PIT to ORD
American flew 604 of the 3,950 flights on PIT to ORD, about 15% of it. Its 69.9% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 84.2% to SkyWest at 65.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 84.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 77.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,290 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,629 | 84.2% | 74 min | 1.66% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 190 | 78.3% | 105 min | 2.63% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,290 | 77.9% | 95 min | 1.86% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 604 | 69.9% | 113 min | 2.98% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 237 | 65.1% | 105 min | 2.11% | C |
Republic leads United by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 41 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am108 flights87.7%
- 8am–11am237 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm45 flights65.1%
- 5pm–8pm111 flights50.5%
- 8pm–5am101 flights46.9%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 46.9% on time, against 87.7% for the 5am–8am 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 237 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PIT to ORD through the year
June is the worst month at 60.7% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 84.7%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.1%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
40% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 19,942 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.98%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 15.2% 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.
At 413 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 55.0% on time across 603 flights, 15 points below 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 604 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 PIT to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.98% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 584 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PIT to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to PIT, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PIT to ORD84.2%
- Envoy Air on PIT to ORD78.3%
- United Airlines on PIT to ORD77.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on PIT to ORD65.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.