Carrier route record
AADFW→SFO
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco
- Flights
- 3,096
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to SFO draws a D. Roughly one flight in two 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 3,096 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on DFW to SFO runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 191 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
58.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,013 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
60.8%
Every carrier on DFW to SFO, 4,264 flights
These figures cover 3,096 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% 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 SFO
American flew 3,096 of the 4,264 flights on DFW to SFO, most of the route. Its 58.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 60.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.7% to Frontier at 53.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 85.7% | 29 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 914 | 70.2% | 76 min | 0.66% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,096 | 58.2% | 67 min | 2.55% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 219 | 53.6% | 58 min | 3.65% | F− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to SFO
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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am315 flights79.6%
- 8am–11am360 flights64.0%
- 11am–2pm681 flights63.2%
- 2pm–5pm397 flights53.2%
- 5pm–8pm616 flights51.2%
- 8pm–5am727 flights49.9%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.9% on time, against 79.6% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 727 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 34.7% on time, 43 points below September, the best at 77.3%. 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 290 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 68.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.2%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DFW to SFO runs when it is late
The 1,258 late arrivals split 373 under half an hour, 430 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 455 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early474 flights15.7%
- Within 15 min1,281 flights42.5%
- 15–29 min late373 flights12.4%
- 30–59 min late430 flights14.3%
- 1–2 hours late295 flights9.8%
- 2+ hours late160 flights5.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 3,013 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
199 of 1,291 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 166 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 SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DFW to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 July 2026, 11 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 July 2026 | 11 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 August 2026 | 9 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 September 2025 | 9 hours 29 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 3 January 2026 | 9 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 November 2025 | 9 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 84,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 84,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 84,336 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 79.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.55%, against 1.89% 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
15.1% 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 1,464 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 3,094 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,096 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 SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 77.3% on time and June 34.7%, a swing of 43 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,013 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to SFO, every carrier
- American on SFO to DFW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DFW to SFO70.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SFO53.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.