Carrier route record
AASYR→ORD
American Airlines · Syracuse to Chicago
- Flights
- 103
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SYR to ORD lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 103 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 686 at 79.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on SYR 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
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 101 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on SYR to ORD, 2,187 flights
These figures cover 103 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 SYR to ORD
American flew 103 of the 2,187 flights on SYR to ORD, about 5% of it. Its 79.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 79.2% to SkyWest at 59.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 79.1% of the time; Republic Airways manages 72.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 752 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 103 | 79.2% | 103 min | 1.94% | B |
| Envoy Air | 686 | 79.1% | 82 min | 2.62% | B |
| United Airlines | 405 | 75.3% | 60 min | 1.73% | B |
| Republic Airways | 752 | 72.7% | 79 min | 3.86% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 241 | 59.1% | 76 min | 4.15% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 3.9% 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 103 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's SYR to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 79.2% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
American on SYR to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202571 flights82.6%
- Oct–Dec 202532 flights71.9%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 79.2% on time across 103 flights.
Split by quarter, American on SYR to ORD logged 71 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 32 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 79.2% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 61% of the 2,166 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.
- 61%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,166 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, 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 1,321 of the 2,166 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.9% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 607 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 50.0% on time across 103 flights, 29 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 29 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 103 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 SYR to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 103 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 79.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 101 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SYR to ORD, every carrier
- American on ORD to SYR, the return leg
- Envoy Air on SYR to ORD79.1%
- United Airlines on SYR to ORD75.3%
- Republic Airways on SYR to ORD72.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on SYR to ORD59.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.