Flight number record

AA 2398

American Airlines · Seattle to Chicago

Route: SEA → ORD
Departs: 13:37
Flights: 283
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 2398, check with American Airlines.

AA 2398 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 283 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AA 2398 runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 152 extra late arrivals.

On time

62.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 274 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.77%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

15.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 283 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 2398 flies

AA 2398 flies SEA to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:37, used on 46 of 283 flights, with 14:52 (41 flights) and 23:33 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 13:3746 flights16.3%
Departs 14:5241 flights14.5%
Departs 23:3338 flights13.4%

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 13:37 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and AA 2398 runs 16 points worse at 62.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

AA 2398 next to SEA to ORD

Every carrier on SEA to ORD combined arrived on time 75.0% of the time across 5,566 flights, so AA 2398 is 13 points behind it. American flew 1,336 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.2% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight trails by 12 points.

AA 2398 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 2398thin sample	283	62.4%	90 min	1.77%	D
All American Airlines on SEA–ORD	1,336	71.2%	93 min	2.02%	C
All carriers on SEA–ORD	5,566	75.0%	74 min	1.28%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 2398 quarter by quarter

AA 2398 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 73.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 47.1%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 71 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 202591 flights47.1%
Oct–Dec 202586 flights73.5%
Jan–Mar 202663 flights64.5%
Apr–Jun 202643 flights69.0%

Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 2398 did best on Tuesday at 74.4% on time and worst on Monday at 48.6%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 26 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 2398 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 9,238 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
63%
Carrier
23%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
3%

63% 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 9,238 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 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 9,238 delay minutes reported on AA 2398.

Cancellations sit at 1.77% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.41%.

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. 15.7% 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.

At 1,721 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 ORD to SEA (231) and ORD to DCA (40), but none flew often enough under AA 2398 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SEA to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 283 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 2398

For a booking, AA 2398 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 15.7% 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.

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