Carrier route record
AADFW→SFO
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco
- Flights
- 3,071
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 74%
- 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 SFO draws a D. Roughly one flight in two 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 3,071 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to SFO runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 183 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,984 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
62.0%
Every carrier on DFW to SFO, 4,125 flights
These figures cover 3,071 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% 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 SFO
American flew 3,071 of the 4,125 flights on DFW to SFO, most of the route. Its 59.3% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 62.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 76.5% to Frontier at 59.0%. 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 | 17 | 76.5% | 29 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 852 | 71.8% | 91 min | 0.82% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,071 | 59.3% | 68 min | 2.74% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 185 | 59.0% | 63 min | 3.78% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to SFO
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am314 flights77.9%
- 8am–11am360 flights66.9%
- 11am–2pm678 flights65.3%
- 2pm–5pm414 flights55.9%
- 5pm–8pm602 flights53.8%
- 8pm–5am703 flights47.5%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.5% on time, against 77.9% 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 703 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 67.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.9%. 15 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 43% of the 83,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 83,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 83,106 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 77.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.74%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.4% 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 1,464 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. 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 73.4% on time across 3,072 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,071 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. 2,984 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 SFO71.8%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SFO59.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.