Carrier route record
AADFW→ABQ
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 1,774
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 77%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to ABQ carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,774 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to ABQ runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 143 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,710 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.0%
Every carrier on DFW to ABQ, 2,290 flights
These figures cover 1,774 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 DFW to ABQ
American flew 1,774 of the 2,290 flights on DFW to ABQ, most of the route. Its 63.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.0% to American at 63.3%. One 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 Air | 465 | 80.0% | 48 min | 1.94% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 51 | 78.0% | 47 min | 1.96% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,774 | 63.3% | 71 min | 3.49% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to ABQ
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–8am—
- 8am–11am429 flights78.7%
- 11am–2pm117 flights70.1%
- 2pm–5pm350 flights62.7%
- 5pm–8pm370 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am508 flights53.4%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.4% on time, against 78.7% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 508 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to ABQ through the year
July is the worst month at 48.3% on time, 28 points below February, the best at 76.3%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 177 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 68.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.4%. 10 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 53% of the 44,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
53% 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 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 44,383 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 15,000 of the 44,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.49%, 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. 13.5% 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 569 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 79.9% on time across 1,775 flights, 17 points above 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 17 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,774 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 DFW to ABQ
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.49% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 1,710 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.