Carrier route record
AADFW→DSM
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Des Moines
- Flights
- 949
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- 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 DSM carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights 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 949 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to DSM runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 204 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 900 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.5%
Every carrier on DFW to DSM, 1,434 flights
These figures cover 949 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.8% 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 DSM
American flew 949 of the 1,434 flights on DFW to DSM, most of the route. Its 57.2% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 85.2% to American at 57.2%. 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 | 330 | 85.2% | 46 min | 1.82% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 81.7% | 74 min | 2.07% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 10 | 80.0% | 67 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 949 | 57.2% | 92 min | 4.95% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to DSM
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–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am188 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm176 flights53.0%
- 2pm–5pm211 flights51.5%
- 5pm–8pm15 flights—
- 8pm–5am358 flights52.5%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 76.9% of the time, against 51.5% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to DSM through the year
June is the worst month at 41.7% on time, 36 points below April, the best at 77.6%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 63.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 47.8%. 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 57% of the 36,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
57% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 35,537 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 76.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.95%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 18.8% 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 624 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 67.9% on time across 949 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 949 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 DSM
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 900 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to DSM, every carrier
- American on DSM to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to DSM85.2%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to DSM81.7%
- 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.