Carrier route record
AADFW→PDX
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Portland
- Flights
- 1,917
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 80%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to PDX draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,917 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to PDX runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 155 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,856 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.9%
Every carrier on DFW to PDX, 2,410 flights
These figures cover 1,917 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 PDX
American flew 1,917 of the 2,410 flights on DFW to PDX, most of the route. Its 62.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 64.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 75.5% to American at 62.1%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 493 | 75.5% | 64 min | 1.22% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,917 | 62.1% | 64 min | 2.97% | D |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to PDX
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–8am—
- 8am–11am544 flights77.0%
- 11am–2pm175 flights66.9%
- 2pm–5pm205 flights54.1%
- 5pm–8pm507 flights55.7%
- 8pm–5am486 flights53.1%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 77.0% 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 544 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to PDX through the year
August is the worst month at 46.3% on time, 29 points below March, the best at 75.2%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 182 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 70.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.2%. 12 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 48% of the 45,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 45,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 45,268 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 16,000 of the 45,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.97%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 12.8% 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 1,616 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.0% on time across 1,919 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,917 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 PDX
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.97% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,856 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to PDX, every carrier
- American on PDX to DFW, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on DFW to PDX75.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) 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.