Flight number record

AA 1978

American Airlines · Washington to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: DCA → DFW
Departs: 07:45
Flights: 310
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1978, check with American Airlines.

AA 1978 lands a B−, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 310 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 1978's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 297 completed flights

Avg delay

103 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.23%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 310 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 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. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:4550 flights16.1%
Departs 07:4342 flights13.5%
Departs 07:5038 flights12.3%

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 07:45 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 6 points worse at 83.2%. 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 1978 next to DCA to DFW

Every carrier on DCA to DFW combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 3,308 flights, so AA 1978 is 6 points ahead of it. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

AA 1978 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 1978thin sample	310	83.2%	103 min	3.23%	B−
All American Airlines on DCA–DFW	3,308	77.6%	85 min	3.39%	B−
All carriers on DCA–DFW	3,308	77.6%	85 min	3.39%	B−
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 1978 quarter by quarter

AA 1978 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 87.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.0%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 78 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 202592 flights87.5%
Oct–Dec 202564 flights84.4%
Jan–Mar 202668 flights77.0%
Apr–Jun 202686 flights82.1%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 1978 did best on Tuesday at 92.9% on time and worst on Monday at 71.4%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 1978 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 5,136 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
1%

45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 5,136 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 5,136 delay minutes reported on AA 1978.

Cancellations run at 3.23%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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

6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including DFW to DCA (159), 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: 3.23% 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.

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