Carrier route record

AABHM→DFW

American Airlines · Birmingham to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 110
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on BHM to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 110 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 742 at 79.9% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on BHM to DFW runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 105 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.55%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.6%

Every carrier on BHM to DFW, 2,203 flights

These figures cover 110 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 BHM to DFW

American flew 110 of the 2,203 flights on BHM to DFW, about 5% of it. Its 69.5% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.1% to American at 69.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on BHM to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	214	87.1%	129 min	1.87%	A
Envoy Air	742	79.9%	68 min	1.75%	B
PSA Airlines	1,137	76.9%	124 min	4.05%	B−
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	110	69.5%	67 min	4.55%	C−

PSA Airlines cancels 4.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 110 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's BHM to DFW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 69.5% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on BHM to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 20251 flights—
Oct–Dec 202568 flights68.2%
Jan–Mar 20262 flights—
Apr–Jun 202639 flights75.0%

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 69.5% on time across 110 flights.

Split by quarter, American on BHM to DFW logged 1 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 68 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 2 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 39 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 69.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 2,155 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
30%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
6%

46% 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 2,155 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 2,155 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 70.4% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.55%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 10.5% 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 597 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 46.2% on time across 111 flights, 23 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 23 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 110 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 BHM to DFW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.55% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 105 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures