Carrier route record
AADFW→LAX
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 4,568
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- 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 LAX sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,568 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 718 at 87.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.9% on time across 718 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,451 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.1%
Every carrier on DFW to LAX, 6,238 flights
These figures cover 4,568 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 LAX
American flew 4,568 of the 6,238 flights on DFW to LAX, most of the route. Its 68.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.9% to American at 68.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 87.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 76.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 447 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 718 | 87.9% | 106 min | 1.95% | A |
| Spirit Airlines | 505 | 80.2% | 66 min | 2.77% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 447 | 76.0% | 75 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,568 | 68.3% | 68 min | 2.50% | C |
Delta leads Frontier by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 30 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am602 flights83.8%
- 8am–11am909 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm901 flights71.6%
- 2pm–5pm674 flights63.1%
- 5pm–8pm803 flights59.5%
- 8pm–5am679 flights53.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.8% on time, against 83.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 909 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to LAX through the year
July is the worst month at 54.2% on time, 25 points below March, the best at 79.4%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 407 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 73.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.7%. 8 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 43% of the 96,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 96,000 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 95,906 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 39,000 of the 96,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.50%, 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. 11.3% 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 1,235 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 72.7% on time across 4,563 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,568 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 LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 79.4% on time and July 54.2%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,451 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to LAX, every carrier
- American on LAX to DFW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DFW to LAX87.9%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to LAX80.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to LAX76.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.