Carrier route record
AADFW→SAN
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to San Diego
- Flights
- 3,214
- 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 SAN draws a D−. About 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 3,214 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to SAN runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 138 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,098 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
63.5%
Every carrier on DFW to SAN, 3,608 flights
These figures cover 3,214 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% 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 SAN
American flew 3,214 of the 3,608 flights on DFW to SAN, most of the route. Its 63.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 63.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 63.8% to Alaska at 56.8%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,214 | 63.8% | 67 min | 3.02% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 254 | 63.7% | 85 min | 2.76% | D |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 140 | 56.8% | 71 min | 0.71% | D+ |
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 39 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–8am353 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am371 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm717 flights61.3%
- 2pm–5pm440 flights60.4%
- 5pm–8pm693 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am640 flights47.0%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.0% on time, against 86.1% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 717 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to SAN through the year
June is the worst month at 45.1% on time, 32 points below March, the best at 77.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 305 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.9%. 11 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 46% of the 75,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 75,000 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 74,621 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.02%, 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. 13.0% 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 1,171 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 77.2% on time across 3,212 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,214 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 SAN
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.02% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 3,098 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to SAN, every carrier
- American on SAN to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SAN63.7%
- Alaska Airlines on DFW to SAN56.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) 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.