Flight profile · American Airlines
AA873
Boston (BOS) to Miami (MIA) · scheduled 9:00 AM – 9:36 AM
How AA873 performs
623 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AA873 arrived on time 87.4% of the time, against 78.2% for all BOS → MIA flights, so this departure is 9.2 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against American Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 4.6 points better.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 623 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AA873 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AA873 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 AA873 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA873 | 87.4% | 0.96% | -14 min | 4.3% | 623 |
| American Airlines on BOS → MIA | 82.8% | 1.48% | -12 min | 5.9% | 6,971 |
| All BOS → MIA flights | 78.2% | 1.59% | -9 min | 8.3% | 11,477 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AA873 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
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AA873 on BOS → MIA. 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 AA873 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
AA873 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 9 hours on the ground at BOS, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AA873 pushed back an average of 6 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 5 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into BOS just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 418 of 618 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA873 | 34% | 18% | 6% |
| Network, same turn | 29% | 12% | 9% |
A night on the ground absorbs most of a late arrival, so a late inbound matters far less on a turn this long than on a same-day one.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 6 hours or more, usually overnight. How often AA873’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AA873 left 15 or more minutes late is higher than 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 BOS late, does that still matter by the time it reaches MIA?
AA873 pushes back an average of 9.0 minutes late and reaches the gate at MIA an average of 1.0 minutes early. The 10.0 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 20.9 minutes on the taxiways at BOS is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.
On arrival at MIA, AA873 spends 8.4 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 1.4 minutes shorter than a typical MIA arrival (9.8 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 MIA. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 28,214 departures from BOS scheduled in the clock hour AA873 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at MIA (340,467 flights), not just AA873’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves BOS
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AA873 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 28,214 departures from BOS are scheduled in the 9 AM–10 AM hour over the period, against 440,893 across the whole day.
AA873 is scheduled out of BOS at 9:00 AM, in the 9 AM–10 AM bank. Departures from BOS in that hour arrive on time 84.9% of the time against 77.2% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 7.7 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from BOS 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 AA873 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ORD→AUS Chicago to Austin | March 8, 2026 – April 6, 2026 | 22 | — |
| ORD→JAX Chicago to Jacksonville | March 21, 2026 – April 4, 2026 | 3 | — |
| ORD→EWR Chicago to Newark | March 20, 2026 – April 3, 2026 | 5 | — |
| AUS→ORD Austin to Chicago | March 8–29, 2026 | 2 | — |
| PHX→SBP Phoenix to San Luis Obispo | February 12, 2026 – March 7, 2026 | 24 | — |
| MTJ→DFW Montrose to Dallas–Fort Worth | January 8, 2026 – February 9, 2026 | 33 | — |
| ATL→ORD Atlanta to Chicago | November 20, 2025 – December 17, 2025 | 24 | — |
| ORD→ATL Chicago to Atlanta | November 20, 2025 – December 17, 2025 | 24 | — |
| DFW→BNA Dallas–Fort Worth to Nashville | November 2–16, 2025 | 5 | — |
| RSW→DFW Fort Myers to Dallas–Fort Worth | November 5, 2023 – March 29, 2025 | 292 | 72.6% |
| DFW→RSW Dallas–Fort Worth to Fort Myers | November 5, 2023 – March 29, 2025 | 273 | 73.8% |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AA873 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.
21 min late
against a median of 14 min early
Percentiles over 623 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA1418 | American Airlines | 93.3% | 17 min early | 627 |
| AA1259 | American Airlines | 88.7% | 15 min early | 1,042 |
| AA873 this flight | American Airlines | 87.4% | 14 min early | 623 |
| DL1399 | Delta Air Lines | 84.4% | 10 min early | 1,031 |
| B61519 | JetBlue | 78.0% | 7 min early | 601 |
| AA2247 | American Airlines | 76.2% | 7 min early | 716 |
| DL776 | Delta Air Lines | 64.5% | 1 min late | 844 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AA873 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 623 records of AA873 operating BOS → MIA, 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