Carrier route record
AADEN→DFW
American Airlines · Denver to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,955
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DEN to DFW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,955 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,902 at 77.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DEN to DFW runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 43 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,841 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.0%
Every carrier on DEN to DFW, 6,029 flights
These figures cover 2,955 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 DEN to DFW
American flew 2,955 of the 6,029 flights on DEN to DFW, about 49% of it. Its 73.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 91.3% to American at 73.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 91.3% | 79 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,902 | 77.2% | 69 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,125 | 75.2% | 71 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 24 | 75.0% | 81 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,955 | 73.3% | 100 min | 3.42% | C− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 77.2%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DEN 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 35 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am771 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am910 flights78.1%
- 11am–2pm363 flights67.0%
- 2pm–5pm520 flights63.6%
- 5pm–8pm391 flights52.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 87.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 910 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DEN to DFW through the year
June is the worst month at 57.9% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 82.1%. 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 276 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.9%. 9 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 50% of the 76,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 76,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 75,663 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 87.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.42%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 12.0% 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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 61.7% on time across 2,951 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,955 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 DEN to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.42% 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. 2,841 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to DFW77.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to DFW75.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) 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.