Carrier route record
AADFW→PHL
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 3,156
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 92%
- 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 PHL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 3,156 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to PHL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,036 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on DFW to PHL, 3,421 flights
These figures cover 3,156 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 PHL
American flew 3,156 of the 3,421 flights on DFW to PHL, most of the route. Its 70.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 70.4% to Frontier at 68.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,156 | 70.4% | 74 min | 3.64% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 265 | 68.2% | 106 min | 3.77% | 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 27 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–8am657 flights84.1%
- 8am–11am691 flights80.8%
- 11am–2pm456 flights66.2%
- 2pm–5pm577 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm535 flights60.2%
- 8pm–5am240 flights56.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 84.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 691 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to PHL through the year
August is the worst month at 58.8% on time, 21 points below April, the best at 79.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 300 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.1%. 10 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 43% of the 66,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
43% 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 66,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 66,391 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 23,000 of the 66,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.64%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 11.6% 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 1,303 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 77.9% on time across 3,162 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,156 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 PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.64% 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. 3,036 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to PHL, every carrier
- American on PHL to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to PHL68.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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.