Carrier route record
AAMIA→DFW
American Airlines · Miami to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 4,294
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 89%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MIA to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,294 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on MIA 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
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,136 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on MIA to DFW, 4,825 flights
These figures cover 4,294 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 MIA to DFW
American flew 4,294 of the 4,825 flights on MIA to DFW, most of the route. Its 73.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 75.3% to Spirit at 62.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 249 | 75.3% | 67 min | 2.41% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,294 | 73.7% | 79 min | 2.79% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 282 | 62.0% | 73 min | 3.19% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on MIA 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 26 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–8am1,045 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am606 flights80.8%
- 11am–2pm646 flights75.4%
- 2pm–5pm605 flights62.9%
- 5pm–8pm833 flights60.9%
- 8pm–5am559 flights69.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.9% on time, against 87.2% 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 1,045 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MIA to DFW through the year
July is the worst month at 60.1% on time, 23 points below December, the best at 83.4%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 400 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.8%. 15 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 86,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 86,000 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. The split is drawn from 86,404 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.79%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 10.5% 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 1,121 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 68.1% on time across 4,297 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 4,294 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 MIA to DFW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. December runs 83.4% on time and July 60.1%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,136 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to MIA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MIA to DFW75.3%
- Spirit Airlines on MIA to DFW62.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) 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.