Flight number record
AA 472
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Washington
- Route
- DFW → DCA
- Departs
- 17:02
- Flights
- 317
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 472, check with American Airlines.
AA 472 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 317 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AA 472 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 115 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 301 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.42%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 317 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When AA 472 flies
AA 472 flies DFW to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:02, used on 70 of 317 flights, with 17:15 (48 flights) and 17:27 (42 flights) next.
- Departs 17:0270 flights22.1%
- Departs 17:1548 flights15.1%
- Departs 17:2742 flights13.2%
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 17:02 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and AA 472 runs 2 points worse at 65.8%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
AA 472 next to DFW to DCA
Every carrier on DFW to DCA combined arrived on time 73.6% of the time across 3,303 flights, so AA 472 is 8 points behind it. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight trails by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 472thin sample | 317 | 65.8% | 57 min | 4.42% | C− |
| All American Airlines on DFW–DCA | 3,303 | 73.6% | 61 min | 2.76% | C |
| All carriers on DFW–DCA | 3,303 | 73.6% | 61 min | 2.76% | C |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 472 quarter by quarter
AA 472 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 51.2%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 79 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 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights66.7%
- Jan–Mar 202688 flights71.6%
- Apr–Jun 202647 flights51.2%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights67.2%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 472 did best on Monday at 77.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 52.4%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 25 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 472 runs when it is late
The 103 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 31 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early56 flights18.6%
- Within 15 min142 flights47.2%
- 15–29 min late32 flights10.6%
- 30–59 min late40 flights13.3%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights7.0%
- 2+ hours late10 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 301 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 112 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 472
The latest arrival of the period was on 5 July 2026, 4 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 5 July 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 November 2025 | 4 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 3 hours 34 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 8 March 2026 | 3 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 2 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AA 472 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 5,904 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,904 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 5,904 delay minutes reported on AA 472.
Cancellations run at 4.42%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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
10.3% 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 1,192 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.
Every one of the 317 flights under AA 472 in the data flew DFW to DCA. 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. 317 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 472
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 472: 4.42% of its 317 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to DFW, the return direction
- American Airlines 2752 on the same route61.8%
- American Airlines 1177 on the same route84.0%
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.