Carrier route record

AAFLL→DFW

American Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 1,986
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 67%
Carriers: 4

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

American on FLL to DFW 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, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,986 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on FLL to DFW runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,904 completed flights

Avg delay

100 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.37%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.7%

Every carrier on FLL to DFW, 2,984 flights

These figures cover 1,986 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 FLL to DFW

American flew 1,986 of the 2,984 flights on FLL to DFW, most of the route. Its 73.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 73.5% to Frontier at 61.2%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on FLL to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines	722	73.5%	65 min	2.91%	C
American Airlines (this page)	1,986	73.2%	100 min	3.37%	C−
JetBlue Airwaysthin sample	134	72.0%	73 min	0.75%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	142	61.2%	70 min	4.23%	D−

Flight by flight

American flight numbers on FLL to DFW

AA 137317:1160.5% · 274 flights

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–8am470 flights86.4%
8am–11am208 flights86.3%
11am–2pm614 flights76.5%
2pm–5pm203 flights60.3%
5pm–8pm491 flights55.7%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 86.4% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 614 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on FLL to DFW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.December best, August worst

August is the worst month at 54.9% on time, 26 points below December, the best at 81.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.3%. 16 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 51,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
11%

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 50,855 reported delay minutes.

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 51,000 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 3.37%, 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. 11.6% 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 1,119 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 68.6% on time across 1,986 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,986 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 FLL to DFW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.37% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,904 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