Carrier route record
AALIT→DFW
American Airlines · Little Rock to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 519
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LIT to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 519 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,656 at 74.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on LIT to DFW runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 76 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 500 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on LIT to DFW, 2,670 flights
These figures cover 519 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% 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 LIT to DFW
American flew 519 of the 2,670 flights on LIT to DFW, about 19% of it. Its 70.0% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 75.9% to American at 70.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 75.9% | 78 min | 5.43% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,656 | 74.7% | 76 min | 2.36% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 403 | 70.4% | 99 min | 2.48% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 519 | 70.0% | 104 min | 3.28% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 74.7%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 30 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am325 flights79.8%
- 8am–11am31 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm43 flights52.4%
- 5pm–8pm120 flights49.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.6% on time, against 79.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 325 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on LIT to DFW through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 59.3%. January is the strongest month at 80.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.4%. 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,538 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 3.28%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.8% 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 304 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 59.2% on time across 518 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 519 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 LIT to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.28% 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. 500 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LIT to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to LIT, the return leg
- Envoy Air on LIT to DFW74.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to DFW70.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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.