Carrier route record
AADFW→LAX
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 4,536
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,536 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 757 at 89.2% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.2% on time across 757 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,433 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on DFW to LAX, 6,184 flights
These figures cover 4,536 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on DFW to LAX
American flew 4,536 of the 6,184 flights on DFW to LAX, most of the route. Its 70.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.2% to American at 70.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 89.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 79.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 510 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 757 | 89.2% | 95 min | 1.59% | A |
| Spirit Airlines | 381 | 81.5% | 72 min | 3.67% | B− |
| Frontier Airlines | 510 | 79.2% | 78 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,536 | 70.2% | 64 min | 2.25% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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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 27 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am578 flights84.1%
- 8am–11am914 flights78.3%
- 11am–2pm901 flights75.3%
- 2pm–5pm691 flights61.9%
- 5pm–8pm725 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am727 flights56.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 84.1% 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 914 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 60.9% on time, 19 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 415 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.4%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DFW to LAX runs when it is late
The 1,319 late arrivals split 433 under half an hour, 452 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 434 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early1,074 flights24.2%
- Within 15 min2,040 flights46.0%
- 15–29 min late433 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late452 flights10.2%
- 1–2 hours late276 flights6.2%
- 2+ hours late158 flights3.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 4,433 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
391 of 1,542 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 168 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DFW to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 November 2025, 13 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 November 2025 | 13 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 June 2026 | 12 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 January 2026 | 9 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 December 2025 | 8 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 October 2025 | 7 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 85,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 85,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 84,918 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 35,000 of the 85,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.25% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.02%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.7% on time across 4,528 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 4,536 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 June 60.9%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 4,433 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 LAX89.2%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to LAX81.5%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to LAX79.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.