Flight number record
AA 1218
American Airlines · Washington to Phoenix
- Route
- DCA → PHX
- Departs
- 10:00
- Flights
- 334
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1218, check with American Airlines.
AA 1218 lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.9 hours on average. That rests on 334 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AA 1218's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 327 completed flights
Avg delay
176 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
8.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 334 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When AA 1218 flies
AA 1218 flies DCA to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:00, used on 143 of 334 flights, with 10:05 (128 flights) next.
- Departs 10:00143 flights42.8%
- Departs 10:05128 flights38.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 10:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and AA 1218 runs level with that at 82.3%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
AA 1218 next to DCA to PHX
Every carrier on DCA to PHX combined arrived on time 82.5% of the time across 1,086 flights, so AA 1218 is about level with it. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 1218thin sample | 334 | 82.3% | 176 min | 1.20% | B |
| All American Airlines on DCA–PHX | 1,086 | 82.5% | 108 min | 1.47% | B |
| All carriers on DCA–PHX | 1,086 | 82.5% | 108 min | 1.47% | B |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 1218 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter AA 1218 held fairly steady: 78.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.8% in Jan–Mar 2026, 87.1% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 83.1% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights78.0%
- Jan–Mar 202666 flights77.8%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights87.1%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights83.1%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 1218 did best on Tuesday at 89.1% on time and worst on Thursday at 73.9%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 1218 runs when it is late
AA 1218 often beats the schedule: 155 of 327 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 58 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 26 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early155 flights47.4%
- Within 15 min114 flights34.9%
- 15–29 min late17 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late15 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.5%
- 2+ hours late21 flights6.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 327 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 55 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 1218
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 November 2025, 20 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 November 2025 | 20 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 April 2026 | 11 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 February 2026 | 11 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 January 2026 | 10 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 November 2025 | 10 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AA 1218 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 to one. The split is drawn from 10,178 delay minutes reported on AA 1218.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.90%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.9 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,979 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 same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including PHX to DCA (91), ORD to CLT (22) and CLT to ORD (18), but none flew often enough under AA 1218 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to PHX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 334 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 AA 1218
For a booking, read AA 1218 as 82.3% on time with 1.20% cancelled over 334 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to PHX, every carrier and departure
- PHX to DCA, the return direction
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record
- Every American Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means American Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.