Flight number record
AA 420
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Denver
- Route
- DFW → DEN
- Departs
- 12:47
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 420, check with American Airlines.
AA 420 lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 351 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.56%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
7.7%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 420 flies
AA 420 flies DFW to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:47, used on 78 of 365 flights, with 12:40 (49 flights) and 12:39 (43 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 12:4778 flights21.4%
- Departs 12:4049 flights13.4%
- Departs 12:3943 flights11.8%
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 12:47 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and AA 420 runs level with that at 77.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
AA 420 next to DFW to DEN
Every carrier on DFW to DEN combined arrived on time 69.4% of the time across 6,025 flights, so AA 420 is 8 points ahead of it. American flew 2,951 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 61.7% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 420 | 365 | 77.5% | 78 min | 3.56% | B− |
| All American Airlines on DFW–DEN | 2,951 | 61.7% | 71 min | 3.42% | D− |
| All carriers on DFW–DEN | 6,025 | 69.4% | 75 min | 2.32% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 986,297 | 74.4% | 85 min | 2.29% | C |
Across the year
AA 420 quarter by quarter
AA 420 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 83.5% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 72.1%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 91 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 flights81.1%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights72.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights72.1%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 420 ranged from 73.1% on Thursday to 82.7% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why AA 420 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 6,129 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
54% 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 6,129 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 6,129 delay minutes reported on AA 420.
Cancellations run at 3.56%, 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
7.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 641 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 420 is not only a DFW to DEN flight. It also flew DEN to DFW (363 flights, 68.9% 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. 365 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEN to DFWthin sample | 363 | 68.9% | 92 min | 4.41% | C− |
What to do with this
Booking AA 420
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 420: 3.56% of its 365 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to DFW, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 2147 on the same route90.5%
- American Airlines 1832 on the same route60.3%
- American Airlines 1322 on the same route45.2%
- American Airlines 577 on the same route51.0%
- United Airlines 2049 on the same route84.2%
- American Airlines 1523 on the same route78.5%
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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.