Carrier route record

AADFW→PHX

American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Phoenix

Flights: 4,581
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 89%
Carriers: 5

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

American on DFW to PHX sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,581 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 PHX runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 67 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,448 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.71%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.7%

Every carrier on DFW to PHX, 5,171 flights

These figures cover 4,581 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 PHX

American flew 4,581 of the 5,171 flights on DFW to PHX, most of the route. Its 70.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 71.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to American at 70.9%. Three 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 PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	10	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	12	91.7%	18 min	0.00%	A+
Frontier Airlines	567	76.8%	80 min	1.76%	B
American Airlines (this page)	4,581	70.9%	71 min	2.71%	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 22 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–8am436 flights83.3%
8am–11am736 flights77.3%
11am–2pm575 flights76.6%
2pm–5pm1,043 flights72.5%
5pm–8pm912 flights63.5%
8pm–5am879 flights61.1%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.1% on time, against 83.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 1,043 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DFW to PHX through the year

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

August is the worst month at 57.3% on time, 21 points below February, the best at 78.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 439 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.0%. 9 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 45% of the 92,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
32%
Extreme weather
11%
National Airspace System
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 92,271 reported delay minutes.

45% 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 92,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 2.71%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 11.3% 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 868 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 80.0% on time across 4,577 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 4,581 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 PHX

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 78.2% on time and August 57.3%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 4,448 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