Carrier route record
AADFW→TUL
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Tulsa
- Flights
- 1,639
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- 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 TUL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,639 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 TUL 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 1,580 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on DFW to TUL, 2,845 flights
These figures cover 1,639 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% 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 TUL
American flew 1,639 of the 2,845 flights on DFW to TUL, most of the route. Its 63.8% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.3% to American at 63.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 212 | 87.3% | 74 min | 2.36% | A |
| Envoy Air | 818 | 84.2% | 46 min | 3.06% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 176 | 78.0% | 72 min | 4.55% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,639 | 63.8% | 82 min | 3.42% | 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 31 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–8am—
- 8am–11am343 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm32 flights56.2%
- 2pm–5pm419 flights65.8%
- 5pm–8pm248 flights48.9%
- 8pm–5am597 flights59.4%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.9% on time, against 80.0% for the 8am–11am 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 597 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to TUL through the year
August is the worst month at 48.2% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 73.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.6%. 18 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 49% of the 47,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 46,661 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 47,000 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.
Cancellations run at 3.42%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 14.8% 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 237 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.0% on time across 1,640 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,639 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 TUL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.42% 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. 1,580 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to TUL, every carrier
- American on TUL to DFW, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to TUL87.3%
- Envoy Air on DFW to TUL84.2%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to TUL78.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.