Carrier route record
AARDU→ORD
American Airlines · Raleigh to Chicago
- Flights
- 553
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on RDU to ORD lands a B−, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.4 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 553 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,295 at 76.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's RDU to ORD record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 533 completed flights
Avg delay
145 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.4%
Every carrier on RDU to ORD, 3,589 flights
These figures cover 553 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 RDU to ORD
American flew 553 of the 3,589 flights on RDU to ORD, about 15% of it. Its 82.2% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 82.2% to PSA at 50.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 553 | 82.2% | 145 min | 3.44% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 77.3% | 138 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,295 | 76.3% | 87 min | 1.16% | B |
| Envoy Air | 523 | 72.3% | 86 min | 1.72% | C |
| Republic Airways | 1,018 | 70.7% | 75 min | 3.63% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 57.7% | 139 min | 5.34% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 3.6% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after 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 37 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am247 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am207 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm27 flights—
- 2pm–5pm45 flights51.2%
- 5pm–8pm26 flights—
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.5% of the time, against 51.2% for the afternoon window. That is 37 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 247 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on RDU to ORD through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 59.1%. August is the strongest month at 91.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. October was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.5%. 12 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. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 14,000 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.
- 42%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 13,805 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 5,866 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.44%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.4 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 646 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 61.8% on time across 555 flights, 20 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 20 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 553 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 RDU to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.44% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.4 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 533 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to RDU, the return leg
- United Airlines on RDU to ORD76.3%
- Envoy Air on RDU to ORD72.3%
- Republic Airways on RDU to ORD70.7%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to ORD57.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.