Flight number record

AA 2581

American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Milwaukee

Route: DFW → MKE
Departs: 08:10
Flights: 257
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 2581, check with American Airlines.

AA 2581 lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 257 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

On time

79.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 249 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.11%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 257 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 2581 flies

AA 2581 flies DFW to MKE without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:10, used on 52 of 257 flights, with 08:40 (46 flights) and 09:00 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:1052 flights20.2%
Departs 08:4046 flights17.9%
Departs 09:0037 flights14.4%

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 08:10 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 2581 runs 5 points worse at 79.5%. 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 2581 next to DFW to MKE

Every carrier on DFW to MKE combined arrived on time 67.0% of the time across 1,084 flights, so AA 2581 is 13 points ahead of it. American flew 1,075 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 66.8% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 5 points.

AA 2581 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 2581thin sample	257	79.5%	55 min	3.11%	B−
All American Airlines on DFW–MKE	1,075	66.8%	77 min	3.81%	C−
All carriers on DFW–MKE	1,084	67.0%	78 min	3.78%	C−
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 2581 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 2581 held fairly steady: 82.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.8% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 74.7% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights82.6%
Oct–Dec 202574 flights80.8%
Jan–Mar 202685 flights74.7%
Apr–Jun 20266 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 2581 did best on Tuesday at 86.5% on time and worst on Thursday at 73.0%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 2581 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 2,809 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.

Carrier
44%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
17%

38% 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 2,809 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 2,809 delay minutes reported on AA 2581.

Cancellations run at 3.11%, 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

5.2% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 853 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 2581 is not only a DFW to MKE flight. It also flew MKE to DFW (255 flights, 72.3% 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. 257 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.

Other routes flown as AA 2581
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
MKE to DFWthin sample	255	72.3%	89 min	1.57%	C

What to do with this

Booking AA 2581

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 2581: 3.11% of its 257 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, 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