Flight number record

AA 1966

American Airlines · Washington to Los Angeles

Route: DCA → LAX
Departs: 08:20
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1966, check with American Airlines.

AA 1966 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 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 1966's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When AA 1966 flies

AA 1966 flies DCA to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:20, used on 97 of 365 flights, with 08:30 (93 flights) and 08:35 (64 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:2097 flights26.6%
Departs 08:3093 flights25.5%
Departs 08:3564 flights17.5%

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 08:20 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 1966 runs level with that at 82.9%. 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 1966 next to DCA to LAX

Every carrier on DCA to LAX combined arrived on time 74.2% of the time across 1,457 flights, so AA 1966 is 9 points ahead of it. American flew 730 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.8% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

AA 1966 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 1966	365	82.9%	50 min	0.82%	B+
All American Airlines on DCA–LAX	730	77.8%	72 min	1.23%	B
All carriers on DCA–LAX	1,457	74.2%	79 min	1.44%	C
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 1966 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 1966 held fairly steady: 79.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 86.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights79.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights81.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights84.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.4%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 1966 did best on Monday at 90.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 76.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 1966 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 3,022 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
41%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
2%

37% 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 3,022 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 3,022 delay minutes reported on AA 1966.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 2,311 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.

Every one of the 365 flights under AA 1966 in the data flew DCA to LAX. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 1966

For a booking, read AA 1966 as 82.9% on time with 0.82% cancelled over 365 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