Flight number record
AA 523
American Airlines · Chicago to Washington
- Route
- ORD → DCA
- Departs
- 06:06
- Flights
- 283
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 523, check with American Airlines.
AA 523 lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 283 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 273 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.53%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
6.6%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 283 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 523 flies
AA 523 flies ORD to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:06, used on 54 of 283 flights, with 06:08 (38 flights) and 06:00 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 06:0654 flights19.1%
- Departs 06:0838 flights13.4%
- Departs 06:0037 flights13.1%
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 06:06 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 523 runs 10 points worse at 79.5%. 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 523 next to ORD to DCA
Every carrier on ORD to DCA combined arrived on time 69.1% of the time across 6,987 flights, so AA 523 is 10 points ahead of it. American flew 2,299 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 66.3% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 523thin sample | 283 | 79.5% | 69 min | 3.53% | B− |
| All American Airlines on ORD–DCA | 2,299 | 66.3% | 95 min | 4.18% | C− |
| All carriers on ORD–DCA | 6,987 | 69.1% | 82 min | 3.05% | C− |
| American Airlines, whole network | 986,297 | 74.4% | 85 min | 2.29% | C |
Across the year
AA 523 quarter by quarter
AA 523 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 68.3%, a swing of 22 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 flights90.1%
- Oct–Dec 202576 flights82.2%
- Jan–Mar 202666 flights68.3%
- Apr–Jun 202650 flights69.6%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 523 did best on Saturday at 86.8% on time and worst on Monday at 71.1%. 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 523 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 3,865 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% 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 3,865 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 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 3,865 delay minutes reported on AA 523.
Cancellations run at 3.53%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
6.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 612 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 one other city pair in the data, including DCA to ORD (40), but none flew often enough under AA 523 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to DCA 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 523
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 523: 3.53% of its 283 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
- ORD to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to ORD, the return direction
- American Airlines 2345 on the same route73.3%
- United Airlines 1369 on the same route49.2%
- United Airlines 1077 on the same route91.1%
- United Airlines 752 on the same route63.5%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.