Carrier route record
AASRQ→ORD
American Airlines · Sarasota to Chicago
- Flights
- 217
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SRQ to ORD draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 217 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on SRQ to ORD runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 145 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 206 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.5%
Every carrier on SRQ to ORD, 999 flights
These figures cover 217 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% 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
American against every carrier on SRQ to ORD
American flew 217 of the 999 flights on SRQ to ORD, about 22% of it. Its 63.1% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 72.5% to SkyWest at 0.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 121 | 72.5% | 70 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 617 | 71.3% | 84 min | 1.62% | C |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 217 | 63.1% | 73 min | 3.69% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 42 | 47.6% | 81 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 109 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 50 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am45 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm105 flights63.4%
- 2pm–5pm16 flights—
- 5pm–8pm51 flights38.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 38.3% on time, against 88.4% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 105 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SRQ to ORD through the year
- Oct–Dec 202531 flights73.3%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights55.0%
- Apr–Jun 2026100 flights66.7%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 63.1% on time across 217 flights.
American on SRQ to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 73.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 55.0%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 72 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.1%. 15 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 5,554 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
47% 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 5,554 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 5,554 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.69%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 16.5% 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.
The 1,050 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 70.7% on time across 216 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 217 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 SRQ to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.69% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 206 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SRQ to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to SRQ, the return leg
- Envoy Air on SRQ to ORD72.5%
- United Airlines on SRQ to ORD71.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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.