Flight number record

AA 1544

American Airlines · Sacramento to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: SMF → DFW
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1544, check with American Airlines.

AA 1544 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 1544's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 125 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights

Avg delay

95 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.19%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 1544 flies

AA 1544 flies SMF to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 218 of 365 flights, with 06:05 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:00218 flights59.7%
Departs 06:0537 flights10.1%

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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 1544 runs level with that at 90.1%. 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 1544 next to SMF to DFW

Every carrier on SMF to DFW combined arrived on time 80.7% of the time across 1,646 flights, so AA 1544 is 9 points ahead of it. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 16 points.

AA 1544 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 1544	365	90.1%	95 min	2.19%	A
All American Airlines on SMF–DFW	1,646	80.7%	90 min	2.73%	B
All carriers on SMF–DFW	1,646	80.7%	90 min	2.73%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 1544 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 1544 held fairly steady: 88.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 91.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights88.6%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights91.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.5%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 1544 did best on Tuesday at 94.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 81.6%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 1544 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 3,314 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
46%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
18%
Late-arriving aircraft
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,314 delay minutes reported on AA 1544.

Cancellations sit at 2.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.37%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% 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 1,431 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 365 flights under AA 1544 in the data flew SMF 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. 365 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 1544

For a booking, read AA 1544 as 90.1% on time with 2.19% cancelled over 365 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