Flight number record
AA 2186
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Orlando
- Route
- DFW → MCO
- Departs
- 18:20
- Flights
- 343
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 2186, check with American Airlines.
AA 2186 earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 43.3% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 34 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 343 flights, with a median arrival 23 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AA 2186 runs 34 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 343 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
43.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 328 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.08%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
24.7%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 343 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 24.7% 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 2186 flies
AA 2186 flies DFW to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:20, used on 54 of 343 flights, with 18:45 (52 flights) and 16:26 (43 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:2054 flights15.7%
- Departs 18:4552 flights15.2%
- Departs 16:2643 flights12.5%
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 18:20 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and AA 2186 runs 25 points worse at 43.3%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
AA 2186 next to DFW to MCO
Every carrier on DFW to MCO combined arrived on time 63.6% of the time across 4,911 flights, so AA 2186 is 20 points behind it. American flew 3,631 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 60.4% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight trails by 31 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 2186thin sample | 343 | 43.3% | 68 min | 4.08% | F− |
| All American Airlines on DFW–MCO | 3,631 | 60.4% | 69 min | 3.06% | D− |
| All carriers on DFW–MCO | 4,911 | 63.6% | 70 min | 2.87% | D |
| American Airlines, whole network | 986,297 | 74.4% | 85 min | 2.29% | C |
Across the year
AA 2186 quarter by quarter
AA 2186 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 47.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 32.5%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 86 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 202585 flights32.5%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights47.7%
- Jan–Mar 202678 flights44.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights47.7%
Scale runs 25% to 55%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 2186 did best on Wednesday at 61.4% on time and worst on Saturday at 30.0%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 31 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why AA 2186 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
57% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 12,701 delay minutes reported on AA 2186.
Cancellations run at 4.08%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 24.7% 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.
The 985 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
Every one of the 343 flights under AA 2186 in the data flew DFW to MCO. 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. 343 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 2186
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 2186: 4.08% of its 343 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 MCO, every carrier and departure
- MCO to DFW, the return direction
- American Airlines 1336 on the same route50.2%
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.