Flight number record
AA 1253
American Airlines · Chicago to San Francisco
- Route
- ORD → SFO
- Departs
- 06:55
- Flights
- 311
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1253, check with American Airlines.
AA 1253 draws a C. About 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 311 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AA 1253 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 110 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 306 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.61%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
13.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 311 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When AA 1253 flies
AA 1253 flies ORD to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:55, used on 44 of 311 flights, with 15:18 (34 flights) next.
- Departs 06:5544 flights14.1%
- Departs 15:1834 flights10.9%
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 06:55 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 1253 runs 23 points worse at 66.3%. 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 1253 next to ORD to SFO
Every carrier on ORD to SFO combined arrived on time 66.2% of the time across 5,649 flights, so AA 1253 is about level with it. American flew 1,766 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 59.9% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight trails by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 1253thin sample | 311 | 66.3% | 78 min | 1.61% | C |
| All American Airlines on ORD–SFO | 1,766 | 59.9% | 73 min | 1.64% | D |
| All carriers on ORD–SFO | 5,649 | 66.2% | 74 min | 1.08% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 1253 quarter by quarter
AA 1253 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 69.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 55.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 78 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.
- Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202565 flights64.6%
- Jan–Mar 202666 flights64.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights69.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights55.9%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 1253 did best on Tuesday at 80.0% on time and worst on Friday at 47.7%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 1253 runs when it is late
AA 1253 often beats the schedule: 81 of 306 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 103 late arrivals split 29 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights26.5%
- Within 15 min122 flights39.9%
- 15–29 min late29 flights9.5%
- 30–59 min late33 flights10.8%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late19 flights6.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 306 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 102 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 21 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 1253
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 November 2025, 9 hours 51 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 7 November 2025 | 9 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 January 2026 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 May 2026 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 January 2026 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 December 2025 | 3 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AA 1253 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 8,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 to one. The split is drawn from 8,000 delay minutes reported on AA 1253.
Cancellations sit at 1.61% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
13.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 1,846 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 three other city pairs in the data, including SFO to ORD (74), DTW to DFW (26) and BOS to DCA (21), but none flew often enough under AA 1253 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to SFO only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 311 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 1253
For a booking, AA 1253 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.4% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to SFO, every carrier and departure
- SFO to ORD, the return direction
- United Airlines 1577 on the same route72.5%
- United Airlines 2179 on the same route45.9%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.