Carrier route record
AALAS→DFW
American Airlines · Las Vegas to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 3,987
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 77%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LAS to DFW lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,987 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 813 at 79.9% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on LAS to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,837 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.2%
Every carrier on LAS to DFW, 5,173 flights
These figures cover 3,987 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 LAS to DFW
American flew 3,987 of the 5,173 flights on LAS to DFW, most of the route. Its 80.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 80.3% to Spirit at 79.8%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,987 | 80.3% | 104 min | 3.19% | B− |
| Frontier Airlines | 813 | 79.9% | 85 min | 1.97% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 373 | 79.8% | 78 min | 1.07% | B |
No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 79.9%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on LAS 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 24 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–8am1,026 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am1,075 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm562 flights73.8%
- 2pm–5pm601 flights65.9%
- 5pm–8pm352 flights73.1%
- 8pm–5am371 flights80.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.3% of the time, against 65.9% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,075 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LAS to DFW through the year
July is the worst month at 68.3% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 88.0%. 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 372 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.5%. 11 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 79,000 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
- 37%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 79,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 78,709 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 29,000 of the 79,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.19%, 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
8.3% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,055 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 66.7% on time across 3,982 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,987 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 LAS to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 3,837 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to LAS, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to DFW79.9%
- Spirit Airlines on LAS to DFW79.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- 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.