Carrier route record

AADFW→DRO

American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Durango

Flights: 128
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on DFW to DRO 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 128 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to DRO runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 170 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 127 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.78%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.3%

Every carrier on DFW to DRO, 1,342 flights

These figures cover 128 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.3% 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 DRO

American flew 128 of the 1,342 flights on DFW to DRO, about 10% of it. Its 60.6% on time is 17 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 79.1% to American at 60.6%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to DRO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	1,214	79.1%	71 min	2.72%	B
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	128	60.6%	84 min	0.78%	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 12 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–11am60 flights70.0%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm36 flights58.3%
8pm–5am23 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 70.0% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 60 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DFW to DRO through the year

Jul–Sep 202564 flights57.1%
Oct–Dec 202564 flights64.1%

Scale runs 50% to 70%. 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 60.6% on time across 128 flights.

Split by quarter, American on DFW to DRO logged 64 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 64 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 60.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 4,215 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

44% 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 4,215 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 4,215 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 1,749 of the 4,215 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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. 17.3% 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 674 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 66.4% on time across 128 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 128 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 DRO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 128 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 60.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 127 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures