Carrier route record
AADFW→AVL
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Asheville
- Flights
- 431
- 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 DFW to AVL 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 431 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to AVL runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 139 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 413 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.7%
Every carrier on DFW to AVL, 725 flights
These figures cover 431 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 AVL
American flew 431 of the 725 flights on DFW to AVL, most of the route. Its 63.7% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 81.2% to American at 63.7%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 275 | 81.2% | 77 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 19 | 72.2% | 235 min | 5.26% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 431 | 63.7% | 83 min | 3.48% | 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 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–11am—
- 11am–2pm360 flights65.5%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm29 flights—
- 8pm–5am41 flights40.5%
Scale runs 30% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 40.5% on time, against 65.5% for the 11am–2pm 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to AVL through the year
July is the worst month at 46.7% on time, 30 points below February, the best at 76.9%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 67.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 56.5%. 11 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 55% of the 12,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
55% 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 12,000 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 12,393 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.48%, 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. 15.7% 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 62.0% on time across 430 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. 431 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 DFW to AVL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.48% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 413 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.