Flight number record
AA 2896
American Airlines · Chicago to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- ORD → DFW
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 280
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 2896, check with American Airlines.
AA 2896 earns a B−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 280 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AA 2896's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 266 completed flights
Avg delay
117 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.93%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
6.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 280 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Schedule
When AA 2896 flies
AA 2896 flies ORD to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 114 of 280 flights, with 06:10 (37 flights) and 05:18 (30 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 06:00114 flights40.7%
- Departs 06:1037 flights13.2%
- Departs 05:1830 flights10.7%
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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 2896 runs 5 points worse at 84.6%. 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 2896 next to ORD to DFW
Every carrier on ORD to DFW combined arrived on time 69.7% of the time across 6,955 flights, so AA 2896 is 15 points ahead of it. American flew 4,233 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 68.3% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 2896thin sample | 280 | 84.6% | 117 min | 3.93% | B− |
| All American Airlines on ORD–DFW | 4,233 | 68.3% | 94 min | 3.87% | C− |
| All carriers on ORD–DFW | 6,955 | 69.7% | 87 min | 3.09% | C− |
| American Airlines, whole network | 986,297 | 74.4% | 85 min | 2.29% | C |
Across the year
AA 2896 quarter by quarter
AA 2896 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 91.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 63.6%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 70 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 flights88.8%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights87.1%
- Jan–Mar 202652 flights91.7%
- Apr–Jun 202647 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 2896 did best on Tuesday at 94.6% on time and worst on Monday at 78.4%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why AA 2896 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 4,810 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
38% 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 4,810 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 4,810 delay minutes reported on AA 2896.
Cancellations run at 3.93%, 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
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 802 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 three other city pairs in the data, including DFW to ORD (44), FLL to LGA (37) and LGA to FLL (37), but none flew often enough under AA 2896 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to DFW only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 280 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 2896
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 2896: 3.93% of its 280 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs close to two hours, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to ORD, the return direction
- United Airlines 2290 on the same route72.9%
- United Airlines 793 on the same route67.6%
- United Airlines 1673 on the same route63.8%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.