Flight profile · American Airlines
AA561
Phoenix (PHX) to Portland (PDX) · scheduled 8:25 PM – 11:08 PM
How AA561 performs
757 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AA561 arrived on time 76.4% of the time, against 80.8% for all PHX → PDX flights, so this departure is 4.4 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against American Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 3.5 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 757 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AA561 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AA561 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA561 | 76.4% | 0.26% | -3 min | 9.0% | 757 |
| American Airlines on PHX → PDX | 79.9% | 0.30% | -6 min | 8.5% | 2,983 |
| All PHX → PDX flights | 80.8% | 0.48% | -4 min | 5.5% | 11,776 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AA561 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AA561 on PHX → PDX. 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 AA561 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying AA561 came in 15 or more minutes late on 17% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into PHX just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 700 of 755 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 |
|---|---|
| AA561 | 17% |
| Network, same turn | 17% |
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 AA561’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
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 PHX late, does that still matter by the time it reaches PDX?
AA561 pushes back an average of 17.3 minutes late and reaches the gate at PDX an average of 13.1 minutes late. The 4.2 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. Its 15.4 minutes on the taxiways at PHX is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.
On arrival at PDX, AA561 spends 7.2 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 2.1 minutes longer than a typical PDX arrival (5.1 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 PDX. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 32,500 departures from PHX scheduled in the clock hour AA561 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at PDX (187,629 flights), not just AA561’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves PHX
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AA561 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 32,500 departures from PHX are scheduled in the 8 PM–9 PM hour over the period, against 598,518 across the whole day.
AA561 is scheduled out of PHX at 8:25 PM, in the 8 PM–9 PM bank. Departures from PHX in that hour arrive on time 73.4% of the time against 80.3% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 6.9 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from PHX 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 AA561 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.
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AA561 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.
48 min late
against a median of 3 min early
Percentiles over 757 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 757 records of AA561 operating PHX → PDX, 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
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