Flight number record

AA 1979

American Airlines · Chicago to Los Angeles

Route: ORD → LAX
Departs: 10:30
Flights: 273
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1979, check with American Airlines.

AA 1979 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 273 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AA 1979 runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 271 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.73%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 273 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 1979 flies

AA 1979 flies ORD to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:30, used on 43 of 273 flights, with 11:45 (33 flights) and 10:00 (32 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:3043 flights15.8%
Departs 11:4533 flights12.1%
Departs 10:0032 flights11.7%

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 10:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 1979 runs 13 points worse at 70.8%. 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 1979 next to ORD to LAX

Every carrier on ORD to LAX combined arrived on time 72.5% of the time across 6,961 flights, so AA 1979 is 2 points behind it. American flew 3,052 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 68.6% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight trails by 4 points.

AA 1979 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 1979thin sample	273	70.8%	61 min	0.73%	C+
All American Airlines on ORD–LAX	3,052	68.6%	75 min	2.29%	C
All carriers on ORD–LAX	6,961	72.5%	73 min	1.59%	C
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 1979 quarter by quarter

AA 1979 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.9% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 63.7%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 91 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 202589 flights75.9%
Oct–Dec 202564 flights67.2%
Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
Apr–Jun 202691 flights63.7%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 1979 did best on Friday at 84.6% on time and worst on Saturday at 56.8%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 28 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 1979 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 4,777 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
7%
Security
0%

41% 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 4,777 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 4,777 delay minutes reported on AA 1979.

Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 1,744 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 two other city pairs in the data, including LAX to ORD (195) and DFW to IAH (27), but none flew often enough under AA 1979 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to LAX only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 273 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 1979

For a booking, read AA 1979 as 70.8% on time with 0.73% cancelled over 273 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