Flight number record
AA 1281
American Airlines · Fort Myers to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- RSW → DFW
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1281, check with American Airlines.
AA 1281 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AA 1281's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 157 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.92%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Schedule
When AA 1281 flies
AA 1281 flies RSW to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 171 of 364 flights, with 06:00 (42 flights) and 07:04 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00171 flights47.0%
- Departs 06:0042 flights11.5%
- Departs 07:0437 flights10.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 1281 runs 4 points better at 93.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
AA 1281 next to RSW to DFW
Every carrier on RSW to DFW combined arrived on time 77.5% of the time across 1,333 flights, so AA 1281 is 16 points ahead of it. American flew 1,331 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.5% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight beats by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 1281thin sample | 364 | 93.0% | 76 min | 1.92% | A |
| All American Airlines on RSW–DFW | 1,331 | 77.5% | 107 min | 2.40% | B |
| All carriers on RSW–DFW | 1,333 | 77.5% | 107 min | 2.40% | B |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 1281 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter AA 1281 held fairly steady: 94.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 91.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 93.4% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights94.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights91.7%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights91.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.4%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 1281 ranged from 91.8% on Saturday to 96.2% on Thursday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 4 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 1281 runs when it is late
AA 1281 often beats the schedule: 185 of 355 completed flights, 52%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When AA 1281 is late it tends to be very late: 13 of its 25 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 3 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early185 flights52.1%
- Within 15 min145 flights40.8%
- 15–29 min late8 flights2.3%
- 30–59 min late4 flights1.1%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights2.8%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
3 of 21 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. Only 7 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 1281
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 June 2026, 4 hours 35 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 June 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 29 January 2026 | 3 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 August 2026 | 3 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 April 2026 | 1 hour 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 February 2026 | 1 hour 45 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why AA 1281 runs late
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 1,902 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 38%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,023 of the 1,902 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,902 delay minutes reported on AA 1281.
Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,017 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
Every one of the 364 flights under AA 1281 in the data flew RSW to DFW. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking AA 1281
For a booking, read AA 1281 as 93.0% on time with 1.92% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- RSW to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to RSW, the return direction
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record
- Every American Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
A flight number here means American Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.