Flight number record
AA 1978
American Airlines · Washington to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- DCA → DFW
- Departs
- 07:45
- Flights
- 310
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1978, check with American Airlines.
AA 1978 earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 310 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AA 1978's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 299 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 310 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When AA 1978 flies
AA 1978 flies DCA to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:45, used on 50 of 310 flights, with 07:43 (42 flights) and 07:50 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 07:4550 flights16.1%
- Departs 07:4342 flights13.5%
- Departs 07:5038 flights12.3%
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 07:45 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 1978 runs 5 points worse at 84.3%. 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 1978 next to DCA to DFW
Every carrier on DCA to DFW combined arrived on time 78.8% of the time across 3,304 flights, so AA 1978 is 6 points ahead of it. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight beats by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 1978thin sample | 310 | 84.3% | 109 min | 2.90% | B |
| All American Airlines on DCA–DFW | 3,304 | 78.8% | 88 min | 2.85% | B |
| All carriers on DCA–DFW | 3,304 | 78.8% | 88 min | 2.85% | B |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 1978 quarter by quarter
AA 1978 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.0%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 62 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 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202564 flights84.4%
- Jan–Mar 202668 flights77.0%
- Apr–Jun 202686 flights82.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.3%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
By weekday, AA 1978 did best on Tuesday at 92.7% on time and worst on Monday at 76.2%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 1978 runs when it is late
AA 1978 often beats the schedule: 134 of 299 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 47 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 20 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early134 flights44.8%
- Within 15 min118 flights39.5%
- 15–29 min late17 flights5.7%
- 30–59 min late10 flights3.3%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late10 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 299 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
5 of 34 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 18 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 1978
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 April 2026, 13 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 April 2026 | 13 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 June 2026 | 12 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 March 2026 | 10 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 April 2026 | 5 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 May 2026 | 5 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why AA 1978 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 5,138 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,138 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 5,138 delay minutes reported on AA 1978.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,192 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including DFW to DCA (97), but none flew often enough under AA 1978 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to DFW only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 310 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 1978
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 1978: 2.90% of its 310 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs close to two hours, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to DCA, the return direction
- American Airlines 1177 on the same route78.7%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.