Carrier route record
AADFW→MFE
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to McAllen
- Flights
- 1,684
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 69%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to MFE draws a D−. Roughly 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 1,684 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on DFW to MFE runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 139 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,628 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.0%
Every carrier on DFW to MFE, 2,445 flights
These figures cover 1,684 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.5% 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 MFE
American flew 1,684 of the 2,445 flights on DFW to MFE, most of the route. Its 63.4% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.9% to American at 63.4%. One 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 | 101 | 88.9% | 62 min | 1.98% | A |
| Envoy Air | 660 | 83.5% | 46 min | 1.36% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,684 | 63.4% | 85 min | 3.09% | D− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am116 flights80.5%
- 8am–11am279 flights76.1%
- 11am–2pm276 flights67.9%
- 2pm–5pm256 flights58.3%
- 5pm–8pm209 flights61.2%
- 8pm–5am548 flights54.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.1% on time, against 80.5% 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 548 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to MFE through the year
July is the worst month at 50.5% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 76.7%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 176 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.9%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DFW to MFE runs when it is late
The 596 late arrivals split 159 under half an hour, 184 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 253 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early208 flights12.8%
- Within 15 min824 flights50.6%
- 15–29 min late159 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late184 flights11.3%
- 1–2 hours late139 flights8.5%
- 2+ hours late114 flights7.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,628 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
87 of 646 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. 37 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DFW to MFE
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 January 2026, 23 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 January 2026 | 23 hours 18 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 4 January 2026 | 18 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 July 2026 | 14 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 June 2026 | 12 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 July 2026 | 10 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 51,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 51,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 50,682 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 80.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.09%, against 1.89% 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
15.5% 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.
At 469 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 78.3% on time across 1,683 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,684 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 MFE
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.09% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,628 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to MFE, every carrier
- American on MFE to DFW, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to MFE88.9%
- Envoy Air on DFW to MFE83.5%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.