Flight profile · American Airlines
AA866
Chicago (ORD) to Phoenix (PHX) · scheduled 11:20 AM – 1:10 PM
How AA866 performs
733 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AA866 arrived on time 75.0% of the time, against 77.8% for all ORD → PHX flights, so this departure is 2.8 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against American Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 1.7 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 733 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AA866 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AA866 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 AA866 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA866 | 75.0% | 0.82% | -7 min | 11.2% | 733 |
| American Airlines on ORD → PHX | 76.7% | 1.16% | -6 min | 9.1% | 9,127 |
| All ORD → PHX flights | 77.8% | 1.07% | -6 min | 8.1% | 17,873 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AA866 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
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AA866 on ORD → PHX. 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 AA866 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying AA866 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 ORD just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 624 of 727 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 |
|---|---|
| AA866 | 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 AA866’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 ORD late, does that still matter by the time it reaches PHX?
AA866 pushes back an average of 30.6 minutes late and reaches the gate at PHX an average of 20.3 minutes late. The 10.4 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 19.2 minutes on the taxiways at ORD, 4.5 minutes shorter than a typical ORD departure in the same hour.
On arrival at PHX, AA866 spends 6.2 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 1.3 minutes shorter than a typical PHX arrival (7.5 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 PHX. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 43,276 departures from ORD scheduled in the clock hour AA866 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at PHX (598,496 flights), not just AA866’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. AA866 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 43,276 departures from ORD are scheduled in the 11 AM–12 PM hour over the period, against 952,802 across the whole day.
AA866 is scheduled out of ORD at 11:20 AM, in the 11 AM–12 PM bank. Departures from ORD in that hour arrive on time 76.8% of the time against 74.5% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour AA866 leaves in is an ordinary one for ORD and explains nothing about its record either way.
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 AA866 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DFW→CMH Dallas–Fort Worth to Columbus | March 8, 2026 – April 6, 2026 | 30 | — |
| DFW→CLT Dallas–Fort Worth to Charlotte | December 18, 2025 – January 5, 2026 | 19 | — |
| TPA→ORD Tampa to Chicago | December 3–17, 2025 | 15 | — |
| DFW→MCO Dallas–Fort Worth to Orlando | November 20, 2025 – December 2, 2025 | 13 | — |
| ORD→MIA Chicago to Miami | November 2–19, 2025 | 18 | — |
| PHX→ATL Phoenix to Atlanta | December 20, 2023 – March 29, 2025 | 105 | 87.4% |
| CLT→ATL Charlotte to Atlanta | January 1, 2025 | 1 | — |
| LBB→DFW Lubbock to Dallas–Fort Worth | December 5–18, 2024 | 12 | — |
| PHX→ORD Phoenix to Chicago | September 4, 2024 – November 4, 2024 | 62 | — |
| STL→PHX St. Louis to Phoenix | July 7, 2024 | 1 | — |
| PHX→CLT Phoenix to Charlotte | July 2, 2024 | 1 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AA866 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.
70 min late
against a median of 7 min early
AA866 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 7 min early, but the worst tenth are 77 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 733 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA866 this flight | American Airlines | 75.0% | 7 min early | 733 |
| UA602 | United Airlines | 73.9% | 5 min early | 863 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AA866 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 733 records of AA866 operating ORD → PHX, 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