Carrier route record

AADFW→LBB

American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Lubbock

Flights: 350
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
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 LBB draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two 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 350 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,502 at 84.1% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to LBB runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 178 extra late arrivals.

On time

59.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 336 completed flights

Avg delay

96 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.3%

Every carrier on DFW to LBB, 2,628 flights

These figures cover 350 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 LBB

American flew 350 of the 2,628 flights on DFW to LBB, about 13% of it. Its 59.8% on time is 20 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.1% to American at 59.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to LBB
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	1,502	84.1%	63 min	1.13%	B
SkyWest Airlines	440	78.9%	100 min	4.77%	B−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	336	77.8%	81 min	6.25%	B−
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	350	59.8%	96 min	4.00%	D−

SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.8% 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.

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 18 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1 flights—
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm81 flights73.1%
5pm–8pm30 flights—
8pm–5am235 flights54.7%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.7% on time, against 73.1% for the 2pm–5pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 235 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DFW to LBB through the year

Jul–Sep 2025118 flights49.6%
Oct–Dec 2025136 flights65.2%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights66.7%
Apr–Jun 20267 flights—

Scale runs 40% 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 59.8% on time across 350 flights.

American on DFW to LBB did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 66.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 49.6%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 117 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 68.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 52.0%. 17 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 13,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
57%
Carrier
29%
Extreme weather
7%
National Airspace System
7%

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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 12,928 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 4.00%, 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. 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.

At 282 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.7% on time across 351 flights, 26 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 26 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 350 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 LBB

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.00% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 336 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