Flight number record
AA 1979
American Airlines · Chicago to Los Angeles
- Route
- ORD → LAX
- Departs
- 10:30
- Flights
- 273
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 273 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AA 1979 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 273 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
12.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 273 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 47 of 273 flights, with 11:45 (33 flights) and 09:00 (31 flights) next.
- Departs 10:3047 flights17.2%
- Departs 11:4533 flights12.1%
- Departs 09:0031 flights11.4%
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 10:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and AA 1979 runs 14 points worse at 69.6%. 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 1979 next to ORD to LAX
Every carrier on ORD to LAX combined arrived on time 72.0% of the time across 7,121 flights, so AA 1979 is 2 points behind it. American flew 3,092 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 67.7% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight trails by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 1979thin sample | 273 | 69.6% | 75 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| All American Airlines on ORD–LAX | 3,092 | 67.7% | 77 min | 1.78% | C |
| All carriers on ORD–LAX | 7,121 | 72.0% | 75 min | 1.33% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 1979 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter AA 1979 held fairly steady: 67.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 63.7% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 69.4% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202564 flights67.2%
- Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights63.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights69.4%
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 1979 did best on Thursday at 78.4% on time and worst on Saturday at 57.9%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 1979 runs when it is late
The 83 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 34 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early58 flights21.2%
- Within 15 min132 flights48.4%
- 15–29 min late26 flights9.5%
- 30–59 min late23 flights8.4%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights6.6%
- 2+ hours late16 flights5.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 273 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 86 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 27 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 24 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 LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 1979
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 July 2026, 5 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 July 2026 | 5 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 5 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 April 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 August 2026 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 May 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AA 1979 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 6,184 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,184 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 6,184 delay minutes reported on AA 1979.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
12.5% 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 1,744 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, AA 1979 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 12.5% 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 LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to ORD, the return direction
- United Airlines 1967 on the same route66.1%
- United Airlines 1363 on the same route81.7%
- United Airlines 576 on the same route73.9%
- United Airlines 2361 on the same route90.3%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.