Carrier route record
AACLE→DFW
American Airlines · Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,458
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 88%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLE to DFW 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 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 1,458 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on CLE to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,402 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on CLE to DFW, 1,653 flights
These figures cover 1,458 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 CLE to DFW
American flew 1,458 of the 1,653 flights on CLE to DFW, most of the route. Its 74.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.4% to PSA at 50.0%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 24 | 86.4% | 37 min | 8.33% | A− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,458 | 74.9% | 100 min | 2.81% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 166 | 73.3% | 60 min | 0.60% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 50.0% | 53 min | 20.00% | F− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on CLE to DFW
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 25 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–8am485 flights82.9%
- 8am–11am163 flights83.2%
- 11am–2pm337 flights74.7%
- 2pm–5pm164 flights72.3%
- 5pm–8pm259 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am50 flights57.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.8% on time, against 83.2% for the 8am–11am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 485 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLE to DFW through the year
June is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 16 points below November, the best at 82.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 63.6%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 35,197 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 14,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.81%, 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 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. 10.3% 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 1,021 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 64.0% on time across 1,457 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,458 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on CLE to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,402 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to CLE, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to DFW73.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.