Carrier route record

AAJFK→DFW

American Airlines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 1,409
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 70%
Carriers: 3

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

American on JFK to DFW lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,409 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on JFK to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,360 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.3%

Every carrier on JFK to DFW, 2,014 flights

These figures cover 1,409 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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 JFK to DFW

American flew 1,409 of the 2,014 flights on JFK to DFW, most of the route. Its 77.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 77.6% to Delta at 71.2%. One 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 JFK to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines (this page)	1,409	77.6%	87 min	2.56%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	171	77.5%	68 min	1.17%	B
Delta Air Lines	434	71.2%	97 min	4.84%	C−

Flight by flight

American flight numbers on JFK to DFW

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 23 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–8am87 flights90.5%
8am–11am325 flights84.7%
11am–2pm267 flights79.1%
2pm–5pm457 flights75.3%
5pm–8pm273 flights67.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.5% of the time, against 67.4% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 457 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on JFK to DFW through the year

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

December is the weak month at 70.6% on time, against 85.5% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.9%. 11 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 26,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

38% 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 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 26,365 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 90.5% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.56%, against 1.81% 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

8.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,391 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 72.3% on time across 1,404 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 1,409 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 JFK to DFW

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 85.5% on time and December 70.6%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,360 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