Carrier route record
AADFW→LEX
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Lexington
- Flights
- 318
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- 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 LEX draws a D. About one flight in three 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 318 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to LEX runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 128 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 310 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on DFW to LEX, 1,216 flights
These figures cover 318 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.4% 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 LEX
American flew 318 of the 1,216 flights on DFW to LEX, about 26% of it. Its 64.8% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 96.9% to American at 64.8%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 32 | 96.9% | 27 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Air | 585 | 78.6% | 53 min | 1.71% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 281 | 75.2% | 107 min | 5.34% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 318 | 64.8% | 97 min | 2.20% | D |
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 13 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–8am—
- 8am–11am163 flights71.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm154 flights57.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.8% on time, against 71.0% for the 8am–11am 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 163 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to LEX through the year
- Oct–Dec 2025114 flights59.3%
- Jan–Mar 2026142 flights65.2%
- Apr–Jun 202662 flights74.2%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 64.8% on time across 318 flights.
American on DFW to LEX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 74.2% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 59.3%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 106 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 80.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.1%. 29 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 58% of the 11,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
58% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 10,523 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 71.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
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. 19.4% 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 785 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 72.6% on time across 318 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 318 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 LEX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 318 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 64.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 310 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to LEX, every carrier
- American on LEX to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to LEX78.6%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to LEX75.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.