Carrier route record
AADFW→PNS
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Pensacola
- Flights
- 1,086
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 64%
- 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 PNS draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,086 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 PNS runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 123 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,050 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.85%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
67.5%
Every carrier on DFW to PNS, 1,706 flights
These figures cover 1,086 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 PNS
American flew 1,086 of the 1,706 flights on DFW to PNS, most of the route. Its 65.0% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.2% to American at 65.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 237 | 82.2% | 50 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 383 | 65.1% | 82 min | 5.74% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,086 | 65.0% | 77 min | 2.85% | C |
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 37 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am284 flights74.4%
- 11am–2pm393 flights65.6%
- 2pm–5pm87 flights37.3%
- 5pm–8pm164 flights61.8%
- 8pm–5am158 flights64.7%
Scale runs 30% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 74.4% of the time, against 37.3% for the afternoon window. That is 37 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 393 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to PNS through the year
June is the worst month at 50.6% on time, 30 points below April, the best at 80.6%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 55.0%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DFW to PNS runs when it is late
The 368 late arrivals split 99 under half an hour, 111 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 158 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early157 flights15.0%
- Within 15 min525 flights50.0%
- 15–29 min late99 flights9.4%
- 30–59 min late111 flights10.6%
- 1–2 hours late89 flights8.5%
- 2+ hours late69 flights6.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,050 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
48 of 360 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 56 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PNS.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DFW to PNS
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 January 2026, 12 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across January, December, May and July, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 January 2026 | 12 hours 57 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 19 December 2025 | 8 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 May 2026 | 7 hours 7 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 29 May 2026 | 6 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 July 2026 | 6 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 28,405 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 74.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.85%, against 1.89% 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
15.0% 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.
The 604 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.0% on time across 1,087 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,086 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking American on DFW to PNS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.85% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 1,050 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to PNS, every carrier
- American on PNS to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to PNS82.2%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to PNS65.1%
- 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.