Carrier route record
ASSAN→ORD
Alaska Airlines · San Diego to Chicago
- Flights
- 688
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SAN to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 688 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,672 at 82.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Alaska on SAN to ORD runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 663 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.33%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on SAN to ORD, 3,807 flights
These figures cover 688 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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
Alaska against every carrier on SAN to ORD
Alaska flew 688 of the 3,807 flights on SAN to ORD, about 18% of it. Its 73.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.0% to Frontier at 38.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,672 | 82.0% | 76 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,386 | 77.3% | 93 min | 1.80% | B |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 688 | 73.5% | 64 min | 2.33% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 61 | 38.3% | 111 min | 1.64% | F |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 82.0%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am66 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am200 flights78.2%
- 11am–2pm193 flights65.8%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm229 flights72.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 65.8% on time against 83.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 229 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SAN to ORD through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 53.0%. February is the strongest month at 91.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 38 points. November was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 11,000 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.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 6,088 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,207 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.31%.
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. 9.5% 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 1,723 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.4% on time across 688 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 688 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 Alaska on SAN to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 688 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 73.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 663 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to ORD, every carrier
- Alaska on ORD to SAN, the return leg
- United Airlines on SAN to ORD82.0%
- American Airlines on SAN to ORD77.3%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.