Flight number record

AA 1218

American Airlines · Washington to Phoenix

Route: DCA → PHX
Departs: 10:05
Flights: 335
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.8 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 335 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 1218's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 330 completed flights

Avg delay

171 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.90%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 335 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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.

Schedule

When AA 1218 flies

AA 1218 flies DCA to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:05, used on 128 of 335 flights, with 10:00 (83 flights) and 11:00 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:05128 flights38.2%
Departs 10:0083 flights24.8%
Departs 11:0036 flights10.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 10:05 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 1218 runs 2 points worse at 82.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

AA 1218 next to DCA to PHX

Every carrier on DCA to PHX combined arrived on time 82.3% of the time across 1,088 flights, so AA 1218 is about level with it. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

AA 1218 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 1218thin sample	335	82.1%	171 min	0.90%	B+
All American Airlines on DCA–PHX	1,088	82.3%	108 min	1.47%	B
All carriers on DCA–PHX	1,088	82.3%	108 min	1.47%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 1218 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 1218 held fairly steady: 84.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 78.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.1% in Apr–Jun 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 202592 flights84.6%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights78.0%
Jan–Mar 202666 flights77.8%
Apr–Jun 202685 flights87.1%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 1218 ranged from 76.6% on Thursday to 87.0% on Saturday. With about 48 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why AA 1218 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 10,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
65%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
1%

65% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 65 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 10,074 delay minutes reported on AA 1218.

Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.60%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

8.2% 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 about 2.8 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. 335 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 82.1% on time with 0.90% cancelled over 335 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures