Flight number record

AA 2502

American Airlines · Orlando to Philadelphia

Route: MCO → PHL
Departs: 17:27
Flights: 270
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 2502, check with American Airlines.

AA 2502 draws a D. Roughly one flight in two 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 270 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AA 2502 runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 187 extra late arrivals.

On time

58.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 263 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.59%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

22.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 270 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.4% 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 2502 flies

AA 2502 flies MCO to PHL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:27, used on 59 of 270 flights, with 17:34 (57 flights) and 20:06 (44 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:2759 flights21.9%
Departs 17:3457 flights21.1%
Departs 20:0644 flights16.3%

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 17:27 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and AA 2502 runs 9 points worse at 58.9%. 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 2502 next to MCO to PHL

Every carrier on MCO to PHL combined arrived on time 72.2% of the time across 5,332 flights, so AA 2502 is 13 points behind it. American flew 2,582 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.3% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight trails by 16 points.

AA 2502 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 2502thin sample	270	58.9%	90 min	2.59%	D
All American Airlines on MCO–PHL	2,582	75.3%	93 min	2.17%	B
All carriers on MCO–PHL	5,332	72.2%	85 min	2.27%	C
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 2502 quarter by quarter

AA 2502 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 75.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 41.3%, a swing of 34 points on roughly 68 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 202592 flights41.3%
Oct–Dec 202564 flights63.5%
Jan–Mar 202664 flights67.8%
Apr–Jun 202650 flights75.5%

Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 2502 did best on Tuesday at 77.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 45.0%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 33 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 2502 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 9,666 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
53%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
14%
Carrier
8%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,666 delay minutes reported on AA 2502.

Cancellations run at 2.59%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 22.4% 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 862 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.

The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including PHL to MCO (176), ORD to CLT (41) and LAX to JFK (1), but none flew often enough under AA 2502 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MCO to PHL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 270 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 2502

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 2502: 2.59% of its 270 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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