Flight number record
AA 1290
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago
- Route
- DFW → ORD
- Departs
- 17:12
- Flights
- 250
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1290, check with American Airlines.
AA 1290 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 250 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AA 1290 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 239 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.60%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 250 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When AA 1290 flies
AA 1290 flies DFW to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:12, used on 46 of 250 flights, with 17:11 (45 flights) and 17:00 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 17:1246 flights18.4%
- Departs 17:1145 flights18.0%
- Departs 17:0037 flights14.8%
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 17:12 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and AA 1290 runs level with that at 66.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
AA 1290 next to DFW to ORD
Every carrier on DFW to ORD combined arrived on time 68.8% of the time across 7,115 flights, so AA 1290 is 2 points behind it. American flew 4,301 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 67.5% 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 1290thin sample | 250 | 66.5% | 75 min | 3.60% | C− |
| All American Airlines on DFW–ORD | 4,301 | 67.5% | 74 min | 3.14% | C− |
| All carriers on DFW–ORD | 7,115 | 68.8% | 82 min | 2.75% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 1290 quarter by quarter
AA 1290 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 77.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.9%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 63 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.
- Oct–Dec 202559 flights57.9%
- Jan–Mar 202683 flights60.3%
- Apr–Jun 202646 flights74.4%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights77.0%
Scale runs 50% to 80%.
By weekday, AA 1290 did best on Thursday at 82.4% on time and worst on Sunday at 47.2%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 35 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 1290 runs when it is late
The 80 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 36 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early52 flights21.8%
- Within 15 min107 flights44.8%
- 15–29 min late21 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late23 flights9.6%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights8.8%
- 2+ hours late15 flights6.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 239 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
15 of 80 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 15 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 1290
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 January 2026, 5 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across January, August, November and June, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 January 2026 | 5 hours 24 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 21 August 2026 | 5 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 November 2025 | 4 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 August 2026 | 3 hours 54 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AA 1290 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 5,990 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,990 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 5,990 delay minutes reported on AA 1290.
Cancellations run at 3.60%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
15.1% 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.
The 802 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including ORD to DFW (62), but none flew often enough under AA 1290 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DFW to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 250 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 1290
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 1290: 3.60% of its 250 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to DFW, the return direction
- United Airlines 1564 on the same route58.8%
- United Airlines 1517 on the same route65.5%
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.