Carrier route record
AASLC→ORD
American Airlines · Salt Lake City to Chicago
- Flights
- 968
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SLC 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 close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 968 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,010 at 76.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on SLC to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 943 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on SLC to ORD, 3,198 flights
These figures cover 968 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 SLC to ORD
American flew 968 of the 3,198 flights on SLC to ORD, about 30% of it. Its 74.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 77.0% to Envoy at 61.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 115 | 77.0% | 122 min | 1.74% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,010 | 76.8% | 70 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,069 | 75.4% | 89 min | 1.12% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 968 | 74.0% | 106 min | 1.86% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 36 | 61.1% | 80 min | 0.00% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 76.8%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 29 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am352 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm318 flights68.5%
- 2pm–5pm76 flights63.5%
- 5pm–8pm222 flights60.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 89.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SLC to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 35 points below January, the best at 84.6%. 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 105 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.9%. 10 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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
38% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 26,026 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 11,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.86% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.72%.
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. 11.7% 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 1,250 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 64.2% on time across 969 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 968 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 SLC to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 968 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 74.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 943 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to SLC, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SLC to ORD77.0%
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to ORD76.8%
- United Airlines on SLC to ORD75.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.