Carrier route record
AADFW→IAH
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston
- Flights
- 2,465
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to IAH carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% 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 2,465 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 840 at 78.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to IAH runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 179 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,373 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.8%
Every carrier on DFW to IAH, 5,780 flights
These figures cover 2,465 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.8% 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 IAH
American flew 2,465 of the 5,780 flights on DFW to IAH, about 43% of it. Its 59.7% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.0% to American at 59.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 840 | 78.0% | 55 min | 2.98% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 53 | 77.6% | 98 min | 7.55% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,414 | 76.9% | 86 min | 1.99% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 75.0% | 113 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,465 | 59.7% | 83 min | 3.73% | D− |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 78.0%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am90 flights73.3%
- 8am–11am493 flights71.4%
- 11am–2pm203 flights63.2%
- 2pm–5pm478 flights56.1%
- 5pm–8pm602 flights51.3%
- 8pm–5am599 flights57.8%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.3% on time, against 73.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 602 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to IAH through the year
June is the worst month at 42.9% on time, 32 points below February, the best at 74.5%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 240 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 67.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 52.4%. 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 79,000 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
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%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 79,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 79,170 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 73.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.73%, 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. 17.8% 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.
At 224 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.2% on time across 2,464 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,465 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 IAH
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.73% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 2,373 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to IAH, every carrier
- American on IAH to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to IAH78.0%
- United Airlines on DFW to IAH76.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.