Carrier route record
AADFW→BOS
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Boston
- Flights
- 2,639
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 70%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to BOS 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 2,639 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to BOS runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 129 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,544 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.1%
Every carrier on DFW to BOS, 3,744 flights
These figures cover 2,639 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 DFW to BOS
American flew 2,639 of the 3,744 flights on DFW to BOS, most of the route. Its 64.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.4% to Spirit at 46.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 861 | 77.4% | 100 min | 2.44% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,639 | 64.7% | 69 min | 3.45% | D− |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 231 | 55.9% | 105 min | 3.46% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 46.2% | 70 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to BOS
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 44 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–8am352 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am713 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm395 flights63.9%
- 2pm–5pm478 flights50.1%
- 5pm–8pm667 flights56.3%
- 8pm–5am34 flights40.6%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 40.6% on time, against 84.7% 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 713 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to BOS through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 46.1%. December is the strongest month at 77.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. June was the busiest month here, with 244 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 69.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.5%. 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 47% of the 61,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
47% 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 61,000 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 61,432 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 84.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.45%, 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. 14.0% 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.
At 1,562 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.0% on time across 2,633 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,639 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 BOS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 2,544 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to BOS, every carrier
- American on BOS to DFW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DFW to BOS77.4%
- JetBlue Airways on DFW to BOS55.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) 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.