Carrier route record
AAPIT→ORD
American Airlines · Pittsburgh to Chicago
- Flights
- 619
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PIT 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 619 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,722 at 83.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on PIT to ORD runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 598 completed flights
Avg delay
120 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.07%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.1%
Every carrier on PIT to ORD, 4,031 flights
These figures cover 619 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on PIT to ORD
American flew 619 of the 4,031 flights on PIT to ORD, about 15% of it. Its 66.4% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.0% to American at 66.4%. 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 83.0% of the time; United Airlines manages 76.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,317 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,722 | 83.0% | 72 min | 1.68% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,317 | 76.1% | 103 min | 2.20% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 138 | 74.8% | 97 min | 2.17% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 235 | 68.4% | 109 min | 4.26% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 619 | 66.4% | 120 min | 3.07% | C− |
Republic leads United by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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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 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am88 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am193 flights80.4%
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm107 flights60.6%
- 5pm–8pm111 flights50.5%
- 8pm–5am118 flights49.5%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.5% on time, against 85.1% 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 193 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PIT to ORD through the year
August is the worst month at 49.2% on time, 36 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 73.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.4%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on PIT to ORD runs when it is late
American on PIT to ORD often beats the schedule: 172 of 598 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When American on PIT to ORD is late it tends to be very late: 101 of its 201 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 62 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early172 flights28.8%
- Within 15 min225 flights37.6%
- 15–29 min late49 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late51 flights8.5%
- 1–2 hours late39 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late62 flights10.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 598 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 176 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 19 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 44 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for American on PIT to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 August 2026, 32 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 August 2026 | 32 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 November 2025 | 23 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 June 2026 | 15 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 July 2026 | 13 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 June 2026 | 10 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 24,159 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,248 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.07%, against 1.89% 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
16.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 54.2% on time across 616 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 619 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 3.07% 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. 598 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 ORD83.0%
- United Airlines on PIT to ORD76.1%
- Envoy Air on PIT to ORD74.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on PIT to ORD68.4%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.