Carrier route record
AADFW→XNA
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Bentonville
- Flights
- 696
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- 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 XNA draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 696 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to XNA runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 148 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 664 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.2%
Every carrier on DFW to XNA, 3,532 flights
These figures cover 696 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.0% 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 XNA
American flew 696 of the 3,532 flights on DFW to XNA, about 20% of it. Its 62.8% on time is 15 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.5% to American at 62.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 2,441 | 82.5% | 57 min | 1.97% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 332 | 78.2% | 77 min | 4.52% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 63 | 77.0% | 50 min | 3.17% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 696 | 62.8% | 105 min | 4.17% | 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 14 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–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am112 flights73.8%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm179 flights59.5%
- 5pm–8pm131 flights63.7%
- 8pm–5am269 flights60.0%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 73.8% of the time, against 59.5% for the afternoon window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 269 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to XNA through the year
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 49.4%. February is the strongest month at 75.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. June was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 51.6%. 24 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 59% of the 26,000 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
59% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 25,899 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 73.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.17%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 19.0% 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.
At 280 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 71.8% on time across 696 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 696 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking American on DFW to XNA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 664 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to XNA, every carrier
- American on XNA to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to XNA82.5%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to XNA78.2%
- 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.