Carrier route record

AALBB→DFW

American Airlines · Lubbock to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 351
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 4

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

American on LBB to DFW earns an A−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.3 hours. That rests on 351 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,503 at 84.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, American's LBB to DFW record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights

Avg delay

136 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.4%

Every carrier on LBB to DFW, 2,628 flights

These figures cover 351 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 LBB to DFW

American flew 351 of the 2,628 flights on LBB to DFW, about 13% of it. Its 85.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 85.7% to PSA at 76.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 84.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 77.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 438 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LBB to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	351	85.7%	136 min	4.56%	A−
Envoy Air	1,503	84.3%	93 min	1.20%	B
SkyWest Airlines	438	77.3%	90 min	4.11%	B−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	336	76.8%	125 min	5.65%	B−

SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 19 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am266 flights90.5%
8am–11am3 flights—
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm28 flights—
5pm–8pm52 flights72.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% 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 72.0% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 266 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on LBB to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 2025118 flights77.7%
Oct–Dec 2025135 flights86.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights94.1%
Apr–Jun 20268 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 85.7% on time across 351 flights.

American on LBB to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 94.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 77.7%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 117 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.9%. 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 6,516 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
49%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
4%

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 6,516 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 6,516 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 2,399 of the 6,516 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 4.56%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 10.1% 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 282 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 59.8% on time across 350 flights, 26 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 26 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 351 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 LBB to DFW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.56% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.3 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. 335 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