Flight number record
AA 420
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Denver
- Route
- DFW → DEN
- Departs
- 12:47
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 420, check with American Airlines.
AA 420 sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.01%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
9.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 (45 flights) and 12:39 (43 flights) next.
- Departs 12:4778 flights21.4%
- Departs 12:4045 flights12.3%
- Departs 12:3943 flights11.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
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 78.3%, and AA 420 runs 4 points worse at 74.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
AA 420 next to DFW to DEN
Every carrier on DFW to DEN combined arrived on time 70.5% of the time across 6,059 flights, so AA 420 is 4 points ahead of it. American flew 2,935 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 62.7% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 420 | 365 | 74.7% | 81 min | 3.01% | C− |
| All American Airlines on DFW–DEN | 2,935 | 62.7% | 69 min | 2.90% | D |
| All carriers on DFW–DEN | 6,059 | 70.5% | 75 min | 1.93% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 420 quarter by quarter
AA 420 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 60.7%, a swing of 29 points on roughly 73 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 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights72.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights72.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights60.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
By weekday, AA 420 ranged from 71.4% on Sunday to 80.4% on Tuesday. With about 52 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 420 runs when it is late
AA 420 often beats the schedule: 116 of 352 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 89 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early116 flights33.0%
- Within 15 min147 flights41.8%
- 15–29 min late25 flights7.1%
- 30–59 min late29 flights8.2%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 352 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
25 of 102 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 420
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 November 2025, 10 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 November 2025 | 10 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 August 2026 | 6 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 March 2026 | 5 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 April 2026 | 4 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 July 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AA 420 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 7,234 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,234 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 7,234 delay minutes reported on AA 420.
Cancellations run at 3.01%, against 1.89% 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
9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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.
AA 420 is not only a DFW to DEN flight. It also flew DEN to DFW (362 flights, 65.4% 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 | 362 | 65.4% | 96 min | 4.14% | C− |
What to do with this
Booking AA 420
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 420: 3.01% 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
- American Airlines 1832 on the same route60.0%
- Frontier Airlines 2147 on the same route90.7%
- American Airlines 1322 on the same route47.4%
- American Airlines 577 on the same route51.3%
- United Airlines 248 on the same route81.8%
- United Airlines 2049 on the same route84.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.