Flight number record

AA 1281

American Airlines · Fort Myers to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: RSW → DFW
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1281, check with American Airlines.

AA 1281 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 1281's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.65%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.

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 (41 flights) and 07:04 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00171 flights47.0%
Departs 06:0041 flights11.3%
Departs 07:0437 flights10.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

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 3 points better at 92.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

AA 1281 next to RSW to DFW

Every carrier on RSW to DFW combined arrived on time 75.5% of the time across 1,372 flights, so AA 1281 is 17 points ahead of it. American flew 1,370 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.4% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 18 points.

AA 1281 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 1281thin sample	364	92.1%	74 min	1.65%	A
All American Airlines on RSW–DFW	1,370	75.4%	110 min	2.92%	B
All carriers on RSW–DFW	1,372	75.5%	110 min	2.92%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 1281 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 1281 held fairly steady: 91.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.0% in Apr–Jun 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 202592 flights91.1%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights94.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights91.7%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights91.0%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 1281 ranged from 89.8% on Saturday to 96.2% on Thursday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why AA 1281 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 2,061 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
51%
National Airspace System
42%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,041 of the 2,061 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,061 delay minutes reported on AA 1281.

Cancellations sit at 1.65% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.82%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

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 92.1% on time with 1.65% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures