Flight number record
AA 1996
American Airlines · San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- SFO → DFW
- Departs
- 11:18
- Flights
- 279
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1996, check with American Airlines.
AA 1996 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 279 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AA 1996 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 274 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
14.2%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 279 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When AA 1996 flies
AA 1996 flies SFO to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:18, used on 32 of 279 flights, with 12:11 (30 flights) and 11:32 (28 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 11:1832 flights11.5%
- Departs 12:1130 flights10.8%
- Departs 11:3228 flights10.0%
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 11:18 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and AA 1996 runs 12 points worse at 66.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
AA 1996 next to SFO to DFW
Every carrier on SFO to DFW combined arrived on time 73.5% of the time across 4,127 flights, so AA 1996 is 7 points behind it. American flew 3,072 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 73.4% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight trails by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 1996thin sample | 279 | 66.8% | 103 min | 1.43% | C |
| All American Airlines on SFO–DFW | 3,072 | 73.4% | 100 min | 2.80% | C |
| All carriers on SFO–DFW | 4,127 | 73.5% | 88 min | 2.37% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 986,297 | 74.4% | 85 min | 2.29% | C |
Across the year
AA 1996 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter AA 1996 held fairly steady: 63.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 65.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 72.7% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights63.3%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights65.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights72.7%
- Apr–Jun 20266 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 1996 did best on Thursday at 75.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 60.0%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why AA 1996 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 9,336 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
57% 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 9,336 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 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 9,336 delay minutes reported on AA 1996.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,464 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.
AA 1996 is not only a SFO to DFW flight. It also flew DFW to SFO (274 flights, 76.1% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 279 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DFW to SFOthin sample | 274 | 76.1% | 75 min | 2.19% | B |
What to do with this
Booking AA 1996
For a booking, AA 1996 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.2% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to SFO, the return direction
- American Airlines 2904 on the same route84.5%
- American Airlines 1949 on the same route81.0%
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.