Carrier route record
AADFW→CID
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 487
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- 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 CID draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 487 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 CID runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 155 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 464 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.1%
Every carrier on DFW to CID, 1,174 flights
These figures cover 487 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% 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 CID
American flew 487 of the 1,174 flights on DFW to CID, about 41% of it. Its 62.1% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.2% to American at 62.1%. 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 | 536 | 84.2% | 64 min | 1.87% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 151 | 76.0% | 79 min | 2.65% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 487 | 62.1% | 79 min | 3.90% | 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 22 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–11am231 flights73.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm87 flights50.6%
- 5pm–8pm47 flights53.5%
- 8pm–5am122 flights52.5%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 73.0% of the time, against 50.6% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 231 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to CID through the year
- Jul–Sep 20251 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025110 flights54.5%
- Jan–Mar 2026228 flights60.1%
- Apr–Jun 2026148 flights70.8%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 62.1% on time across 487 flights.
American on DFW to CID did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 70.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 54.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 162 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.7%. 28 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 52% of the 14,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
52% 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 14,000 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 13,831 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 4,768 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.90%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 16.6% 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 685 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 70.7% on time across 487 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 487 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 CID
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.90% 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. 464 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to CID, every carrier
- American on CID to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to CID84.2%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to CID76.0%
- 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.