Carrier route record

AADFW→SEA

American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Seattle

Flights: 2,736
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 52%
Carriers: 4

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

American on DFW to SEA draws a C. 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 2,736 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 712 at 78.9% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to SEA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 126 extra late arrivals.

On time

65.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,659 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.67%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.5%

Every carrier on DFW to SEA, 5,232 flights

These figures cover 2,736 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 SEA

American flew 2,736 of the 5,232 flights on DFW to SEA, most of the route. Its 65.0% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.9% to American at 65.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.9% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 72.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,756 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to SEA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	712	78.9%	88 min	1.69%	B
Alaska Airlines	1,756	72.7%	57 min	1.48%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	28	67.9%	43 min	0.00%	C+
American Airlines (this page)	2,736	65.0%	64 min	2.67%	C

Delta leads Alaska by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Flight by flight

American flight numbers on DFW to SEA

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 35 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am300 flights83.2%
8am–11am667 flights74.8%
11am–2pm403 flights71.8%
2pm–5pm283 flights53.6%
5pm–8pm603 flights59.3%
8pm–5am480 flights48.1%

Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 48.1% on time, against 83.2% 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 667 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DFW to SEA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, June worst

June is the worst month at 50.4% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 75.5%. 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 259 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 69.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.2%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 60,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
9%
Security
0%

40% 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 60,000 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. The split is drawn from 59,857 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 60,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.67%, 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.

At 1,660 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 77.6% on time across 2,738 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 2,736 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 SEA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 75.5% on time and June 50.4%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,659 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