Carrier route record

AADFW→MIA

American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Miami

Flights: 4,297
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 89%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on DFW to MIA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,297 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to MIA runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 95 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,166 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.8%

Every carrier on DFW to MIA, 4,831 flights

These figures cover 4,297 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 MIA

American flew 4,297 of the 4,831 flights on DFW to MIA, most of the route. Its 68.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 80.4% to Frontier at 67.2%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to MIA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	282	80.4%	62 min	2.13%	B
American Airlines (this page)	4,297	68.1%	73 min	2.82%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	252	67.2%	108 min	1.98%	C

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 23 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–8am982 flights79.5%
8am–11am778 flights79.2%
11am–2pm370 flights71.6%
2pm–5pm869 flights57.7%
5pm–8pm745 flights60.4%
8pm–5am553 flights56.1%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 79.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 982 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DFW to MIA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, August worst

August is the worst month at 49.7% on time, 27 points below April, the best at 76.9%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 402 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 61.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 97,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
11%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 97,109 reported delay minutes.

38% 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 97,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.

Cancellations run at 2.82%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 11.7% 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 1,121 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 73.7% on time across 4,294 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 4,297 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 MIA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.82% 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. 4,166 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