Carrier route record
AALGA→DFW
American Airlines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 4,295
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 63%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LGA to DFW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 4,295 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on LGA to DFW runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 66 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,043 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.8%
Every carrier on LGA to DFW, 6,782 flights
These figures cover 4,295 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 LGA to DFW
American flew 4,295 of the 6,782 flights on LGA to DFW, most of the route. Its 71.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 71.0% to Frontier at 66.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,955 | 71.0% | 74 min | 4.35% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,295 | 71.0% | 90 min | 4.98% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 241 | 69.6% | 74 min | 7.05% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 291 | 66.2% | 114 min | 6.53% | C− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on LGA 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 29 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–8am676 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am856 flights76.2%
- 11am–2pm679 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm809 flights61.0%
- 5pm–8pm964 flights57.5%
- 8pm–5am311 flights69.1%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.5% on time, against 86.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 964 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LGA to DFW through the year
December is the weak month at 63.8% on time, against 81.2% in January. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 376 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.8%. 15 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 46% of the 105,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 105,041 reported delay minutes.
46% 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 105,000 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 4.98%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 12.3% 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 1,389 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 64.6% on time across 4,298 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,295 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 LGA to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.98% 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. 4,043 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to DFW71.0%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to DFW69.6%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to DFW66.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.