Carrier route record
AADFW→MCI
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Kansas City
- Flights
- 1,995
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- 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 MCI draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,995 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to MCI runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 129 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,927 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.7%
Every carrier on DFW to MCI, 2,539 flights
These figures cover 1,995 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% 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 MCI
American flew 1,995 of the 2,539 flights on DFW to MCI, most of the route. Its 64.7% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.1% to American at 64.7%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 413 | 86.1% | 48 min | 0.73% | A+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 75.5% | 66 min | 10.53% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 71.4% | 99 min | 17.65% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,995 | 64.7% | 78 min | 3.11% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to MCI
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 24 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–8am274 flights76.8%
- 8am–11am311 flights77.5%
- 11am–2pm322 flights71.0%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights59.6%
- 5pm–8pm389 flights53.9%
- 8pm–5am532 flights56.3%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.9% on time, against 77.5% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 532 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to MCI through the year
July is the worst month at 41.0% on time, 43 points below February, the best at 84.0%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 210 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 72.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.1%. 19 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 54% of the 53,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
54% 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 53,000 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 52,960 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 77.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.11%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 14.4% 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.
At 460 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.8% on time across 1,994 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,995 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 MCI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.11% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,927 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to MCI, every carrier
- American on MCI to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to MCI86.1%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to MCI75.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) 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.