Flight number record
AA 1544
American Airlines · Sacramento to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- SMF → DFW
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AA 1544's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 162 of 365 flights, with 05:31 (55 flights) and 06:05 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00162 flights44.4%
- Departs 05:3155 flights15.1%
- Departs 06:0537 flights10.1%
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 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 89.5%. 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 1544 next to SMF to DFW
Every carrier on SMF to DFW combined arrived on time 81.4% of the time across 1,601 flights, so AA 1544 is 8 points ahead of it. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight beats by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 1544 | 365 | 89.5% | 105 min | 1.64% | A |
| All American Airlines on SMF–DFW | 1,601 | 81.4% | 100 min | 2.37% | B |
| All carriers on SMF–DFW | 1,601 | 81.4% | 100 min | 2.37% | B |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 1544 quarter by quarter
AA 1544 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 92.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 82.0%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights91.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights82.0%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 1544 ranged from 82.7% on Friday to 94.2% on Wednesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 1544 runs when it is late
AA 1544 often beats the schedule: 151 of 354 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 37 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early151 flights42.7%
- Within 15 min166 flights46.9%
- 15–29 min late16 flights4.5%
- 30–59 min late10 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.6%
- 2+ hours late9 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 354 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
6 of 36 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. Only 7 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 1544
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 July 2026, 14 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 July 2026 | 14 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 January 2026 | 9 hours 4 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 26 January 2026 | 8 hours 16 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 10 May 2026 | 3 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 December 2025 | 3 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why AA 1544 runs late
Carrier accounts for 64% of the 3,894 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,894 delay minutes reported on AA 1544.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.89%, 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 8.3% 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 1,431 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.
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 89.5% on time with 1.64% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- SMF to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to SMF, the return direction
- Sacramento International (SMF) 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.