Flight profile · American Airlines
AA1387
Chicago (ORD) to Denver (DEN) · scheduled 8:45 PM – 10:37 PM
How AA1387 performs
1,022 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AA1387 arrived on time 59.6% of the time, against 77.0% for all ORD → DEN flights, so this departure is 17.4 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against American Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 9.8 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,022 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AA1387 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
What stands out
How AA1387 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
This flight runs unusually far behind the ORD → DEN route as a whole, worse than 95% of 11,788 comparable flight numbers.
59.6% on time for this specific departure, against 77.0% for every ORD → DEN flight.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.
Where AA1387 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
Ask for the position of AA1387 right now, if receivers on the ground are hearing it. Nothing is requested until you press the button.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA1387 | 59.6% | 1.96% | 5 min | 16.0% | 1,022 |
| American Airlines on ORD → DEN | 69.4% | 1.20% | -2 min | 12.0% | 3,736 |
| All ORD → DEN flights | 77.0% | 1.17% | -6 min | 8.8% | 19,502 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AA1387 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AA1387 on ORD → DEN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies AA1387 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AA1387 pushed back an average of 55 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 10 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into ORD just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 878 of 1,003 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA1387 | 34% | 67% | 22% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often AA1387’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AA1387 left 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves ORD late, does that still matter by the time it reaches DEN?
AA1387 pushes back an average of 32.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at DEN an average of 27.8 minutes late. The 4.4 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 24.4 minutes on the taxiways at ORD, 2.4 minutes shorter than a typical ORD departure in the same hour.
On arrival at DEN, AA1387 spends 10.1 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at DEN spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached DEN. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 66,182 departures from ORD scheduled in the clock hour AA1387 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DEN (963,027 flights), not just AA1387’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves ORD
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AA1387 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 66,182 departures from ORD are scheduled in the 8 PM–9 PM hour over the period, against 952,802 across the whole day.
AA1387 is scheduled out of ORD at 8:45 PM, in the 8 PM–9 PM bank. Departures from ORD in that hour arrive on time 64.7% of the time against 74.5% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 9.8 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from ORD to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does AA1387 run worse on particular days?
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Thursday the least, a gap of 12.7 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes AA1387 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| BNA→DFW Nashville to Dallas–Fort Worth | January 6, 2026 – February 11, 2026 | 37 | — |
| DFW→RDM Dallas–Fort Worth to Redmond | May 23, 2024 | 1 | — |
| RDM→DFW Redmond to Dallas–Fort Worth | May 23, 2024 | 1 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AA1387 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
86 min late
against a median of 5 min late
AA1387 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 5 min late, but the worst tenth are 81 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 1,022 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA1803 | United Airlines | 85.2% | 10 min early | 606 |
| UA767 | United Airlines | 69.4% | 2 min early | 1,081 |
| AA1387 this flight | American Airlines | 59.6% | 5 min late | 1,022 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AA1387 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,022 records of AA1387 operating ORD → DEN, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed