Flight number record
AA 2261
American Airlines · St. Louis to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- STL → DFW
- Departs
- 05:20
- Flights
- 358
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 2261, check with American Airlines.
AA 2261 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.9 hours. That rests on 358 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AA 2261's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 143 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights
Avg delay
173 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.07%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
3.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 358 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 2261 flies
AA 2261 flies STL to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:20, used on 56 of 358 flights, with 05:12 (54 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 05:2056 flights15.6%
- Departs 05:1254 flights15.1%
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 05:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 2261 runs 3 points better at 91.9%. 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 2261 next to STL to DFW
Every carrier on STL to DFW combined arrived on time 74.5% of the time across 2,380 flights, so AA 2261 is 17 points ahead of it. American flew 1,852 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.8% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 2261thin sample | 358 | 91.9% | 173 min | 3.07% | A− |
| All American Airlines on STL–DFW | 1,852 | 74.8% | 114 min | 3.46% | C− |
| All carriers on STL–DFW | 2,380 | 74.5% | 111 min | 3.40% | C− |
| American Airlines, whole network | 986,297 | 74.4% | 85 min | 2.29% | C |
Across the year
AA 2261 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter AA 2261 held fairly steady: 93.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 93.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202589 flights93.1%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights92.0%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights89.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.1%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 2261 ranged from 87.2% on Sunday to 95.9% on Friday. With about 51 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why AA 2261 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 4,847 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
37% 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 4,847 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 4,847 delay minutes reported on AA 2261.
Cancellations run at 3.07%, against 1.81% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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 550 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 358 flights under AA 2261 in the data flew STL 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. 358 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 2261
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 2261: 3.07% of its 358 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about 2.9 hours, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- STL to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to STL, the return direction
- American Airlines 1410 on the same route79.4%
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) 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.