Flight number record
AA 852
American Airlines · Denver to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- DEN → DFW
- Departs
- 08:00
- Flights
- 291
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 852, check with American Airlines.
AA 852 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 about 2.5 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 291 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 281 completed flights
Avg delay
153 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.75%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
11.4%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 291 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When AA 852 flies
AA 852 flies DEN to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:00, used on 61 of 291 flights, with 07:26 (44 flights) and 08:22 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 08:0061 flights21.0%
- Departs 07:2644 flights15.1%
- Departs 08:2236 flights12.4%
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 08:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AA 852 runs 7 points worse at 77.6%. 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 852 next to DEN to DFW
Every carrier on DEN to DFW combined arrived on time 75.0% of the time across 6,029 flights, so AA 852 is 3 points ahead of it. American flew 2,955 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 73.3% 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 852thin sample | 291 | 77.6% | 153 min | 2.75% | B |
| All American Airlines on DEN–DFW | 2,955 | 73.3% | 100 min | 3.42% | C− |
| All carriers on DEN–DFW | 6,029 | 75.0% | 85 min | 2.07% | B |
| American Airlines, whole network | 986,297 | 74.4% | 85 min | 2.29% | C |
Across the year
AA 852 quarter by quarter
AA 852 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 85.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 55.6%, a swing of 30 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 202564 flights55.6%
- Oct–Dec 202587 flights85.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.2%
- Apr–Jun 202650 flights85.7%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, AA 852 ranged from 71.1% on Saturday to 82.5% on Friday. With about 42 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why AA 852 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 69% of the 9,637 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.
- 69%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,631 of the 9,637 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,637 delay minutes reported on AA 852.
Cancellations run at 2.75%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including DFW to LAS (2) and DCA to BOS (1), but none flew often enough under AA 852 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to DFW only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 291 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 852
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on AA 852: 2.75% of its 291 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about 2.5 hours, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to DEN, the return direction
- American Airlines 420 on the same route68.9%
- United Airlines 1350 on the same route84.5%
- United Airlines 1565 on the same route66.6%
- American Airlines 1523 on the same route81.4%
- American Airlines 1832 on the same route57.7%
- Frontier Airlines 1324 on the same route89.6%
- Denver International (DEN) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.