Carrier route record
AADFW→CHS
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Charleston
- Flights
- 945
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 76%
- 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 CHS draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 945 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to CHS runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 112 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 919 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.0%
Every carrier on DFW to CHS, 1,247 flights
These figures cover 945 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 CHS
American flew 945 of the 1,247 flights on DFW to CHS, most of the route. Its 66.4% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 91.7% to American at 66.4%. 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 | 171 | 91.7% | 55 min | 1.75% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 83.3% | 99 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 113 | 75.9% | 80 min | 4.42% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 945 | 66.4% | 66 min | 2.65% | C |
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 26 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–11am135 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm229 flights74.9%
- 2pm–5pm217 flights58.9%
- 5pm–8pm332 flights57.9%
- 8pm–5am32 flights68.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.9% on time, against 83.6% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 332 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to CHS through the year
August is the worst month at 56.2% on time, 19 points below October, the best at 75.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 58.8%. 15 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 48% of the 20,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
48% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 20,371 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.65%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 13.6% 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 987 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 78.0% on time across 946 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 945 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 CHS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 945 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 66.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 919 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to CHS, every carrier
- American on CHS to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to CHS91.7%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to CHS75.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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.