Carrier route record
AADFW→MEM
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Memphis
- Flights
- 1,529
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 64%
- 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 MEM carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,529 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to MEM runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 153 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,477 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.4%
Every carrier on DFW to MEM, 2,388 flights
These figures cover 1,529 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% 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 MEM
American flew 1,529 of the 2,388 flights on DFW to MEM, most of the route. Its 62.3% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 76.6% to American at 62.3%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 161 | 76.6% | 62 min | 1.86% | B |
| Envoy Air | 659 | 76.5% | 56 min | 2.43% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 39 | 73.7% | 37 min | 2.56% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,529 | 62.3% | 69 min | 3.40% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to MEM
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 20 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–8am55 flights74.1%
- 8am–11am243 flights69.4%
- 11am–2pm231 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm130 flights70.6%
- 5pm–8pm381 flights58.3%
- 8pm–5am489 flights54.4%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.4% on time, against 74.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 489 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to MEM through the year
July is the worst month at 50.5% on time, 32 points below September, the best at 82.2%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 157 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.4%. 15 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 51% of the 38,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 38,223 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 74.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.40%, 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. 13.9% 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 431 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.5% on time across 1,528 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,529 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 MEM
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.40% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,477 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to MEM, every carrier
- American on MEM to DFW, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on DFW to MEM76.6%
- Envoy Air on DFW to MEM76.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.