Flight profile · American Airlines
AA431
Chicago (ORD) to San Antonio (SAT) · scheduled 8:50 PM – 11:59 PM
How AA431 performs
815 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AA431 arrived on time 63.7% of the time, against 74.4% for all ORD → SAT flights, so this departure is 10.7 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against American Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 7.6 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 815 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AA431 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AA431 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA431 | 63.7% | 2.45% | 1 min | 16.0% | 815 |
| American Airlines on ORD → SAT | 71.3% | 1.59% | -4 min | 11.6% | 1,945 |
| All ORD → SAT flights | 74.4% | 1.34% | -5 min | 9.7% | 5,145 |
AA431 has cancelled 2.45% of its scheduled departures (20 of 815), against 1.34% for all ORD → SAT flights — this specific departure cancels 1.1 percentage points more often than the route as a whole. Different flight numbers on the same route can carry different aircraft, crews and schedules, so this is a fact about AA431 specifically, not about the route it flies.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AA431 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 AA431 on ORD → SAT. 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 AA431 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AA431 pushed back an average of 49 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 8 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, 672 of 798 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA431 | 35% | 69% | 18% |
| 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 AA431’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AA431 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 SAT?
AA431 pushes back an average of 28.5 minutes late and reaches the gate at SAT an average of 19.9 minutes late. The 8.7 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 21.5 minutes on the taxiways at ORD, 5.3 minutes shorter than a typical ORD departure in the same hour.
On arrival at SAT, AA431 spends 6.0 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 1.2 minutes longer than a typical SAT arrival (4.8 min).
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 SAT. 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 AA431 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at SAT (127,244 flights), not just AA431’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. AA431 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.
AA431 is scheduled out of ORD at 8:50 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.
Other routes AA431 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLT→SJC Charlotte to San Jose | February 5–9, 2026 | 3 | — |
| CLT→ATL Charlotte to Atlanta | January 9, 2024 – February 13, 2024 | 6 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AA431 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.
81 min late
against a median of 1 min late
AA431 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 1 min late, but the worst tenth are 80 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 815 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 815 records of AA431 operating ORD → SAT, 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