Flight number record

AA 824

American Airlines · Philadelphia to Los Angeles

Route: PHL → LAX
Departs: 08:55
Flights: 356
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 824, check with American Airlines.

AA 824 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 356 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 824's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.84%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.3%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 356 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 824 flies

AA 824 flies PHL to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:55, used on 59 of 356 flights, with 08:40 (45 flights) and 08:54 (45 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:5559 flights16.6%
Departs 08:4045 flights12.6%
Departs 08:5445 flights12.6%

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 08:55 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 824 runs 3 points better at 87.2%. 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 824 next to PHL to LAX

Every carrier on PHL to LAX combined arrived on time 78.3% of the time across 2,418 flights, so AA 824 is 9 points ahead of it. American flew 2,329 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.7% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 13 points.

AA 824 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 824thin sample	356	87.2%	77 min	0.84%	A+
All American Airlines on PHL–LAX	2,329	78.7%	71 min	1.46%	B
All carriers on PHL–LAX	2,418	78.3%	70 min	1.41%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 824 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 824 held fairly steady: 90.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 83.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 86.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 89.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202587 flights90.8%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights83.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 824 ranged from 82.0% on Monday to 90.6% on Tuesday. With about 51 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why AA 824 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 3,481 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
50%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
2%

50% 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 3,481 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 3,481 delay minutes reported on AA 824.

Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 2,402 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.

Every one of the 356 flights under AA 824 in the data flew PHL to LAX. 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. 356 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 824

For a booking, AA 824 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.2% on time and 0.84% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

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