Carrier route record
AAAVL→DFW
American Airlines · Asheville to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 430
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on AVL to DFW draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 430 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on AVL to DFW runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 156 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 408 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.2%
Every carrier on AVL to DFW, 726 flights
These figures cover 430 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% 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.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on AVL to DFW
American flew 430 of the 726 flights on AVL to DFW, most of the route. Its 62.0% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to American at 62.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 19 | 100.0% | — | 5.26% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 277 | 83.2% | 133 min | 0.72% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 430 | 62.0% | 99 min | 3.72% | D− |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am41 flights71.1%
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm275 flights62.4%
- 5pm–8pm86 flights54.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.1% on time, against 71.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 275 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on AVL to DFW through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 53.3%. February is the strongest month at 80.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. June was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 67.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.4%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 15,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
61% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 15,304 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 71.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.72%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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 stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.9% 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 848 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 return leg runs 63.7% on time across 431 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 430 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 American on AVL to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.72% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 408 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.