Carrier route record
AALGA→DFW
American Airlines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 4,309
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 4.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 4,309 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on LGA to DFW runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,060 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.92%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on LGA to DFW, 6,646 flights
These figures cover 4,309 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on LGA to DFW
American flew 4,309 of the 6,646 flights on LGA to DFW, most of the route. Its 71.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 71.2% to Frontier at 59.3%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,309 | 71.2% | 93 min | 4.92% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,851 | 69.8% | 73 min | 4.97% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 195 | 66.5% | 78 min | 8.21% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 291 | 59.3% | 108 min | 7.22% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on LGA to DFW
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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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am680 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am852 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm679 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm809 flights62.3%
- 5pm–8pm974 flights59.7%
- 8pm–5am315 flights68.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.7% on time, against 85.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 974 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. August was the busiest month here, with 376 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.8%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on LGA to DFW runs when it is late
American on LGA to DFW often beats the schedule: 1,550 of 4,060 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 1,171 late arrivals split 317 under half an hour, 339 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 515 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early1,550 flights38.2%
- Within 15 min1,339 flights33.0%
- 15–29 min late317 flights7.8%
- 30–59 min late339 flights8.3%
- 1–2 hours late280 flights6.9%
- 2+ hours late235 flights5.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 4,060 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
281 of 1,127 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. In the other direction, 325 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.
The worst days
Worst days for American on LGA to DFW
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 October 2025, 27 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across October, January, May and August, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 October 2025 | 27 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 January 2026 | 25 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 May 2026 | 21 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 August 2026 | 19 hours 12 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 3 August 2026 | 18 hours 20 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 109,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 1%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 108,722 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 109,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.92%, against 1.89% 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
12.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.0% on time across 4,311 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,309 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 4.92% 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. 4,060 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 DFW69.8%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to DFW66.5%
- Frontier Airlines on LGA to DFW59.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.