Carrier route record
AAORD→DFW
American Airlines · Chicago to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 4,233
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to DFW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% 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 4,233 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,010 at 73.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on ORD to DFW runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,032 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on ORD to DFW, 6,955 flights
These figures cover 4,233 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 ORD to DFW
American flew 4,233 of the 6,955 flights on ORD to DFW, most of the route. Its 68.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.5% to Spirit at 63.6%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 22 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 65 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 2,010 | 73.2% | 72 min | 1.29% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 134 | 71.9% | 71 min | 3.73% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 4,233 | 68.3% | 94 min | 3.87% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 434 | 68.0% | 85 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 124 | 63.6% | 82 min | 3.23% | D− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.7% 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.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on ORD 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 23 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am757 flights82.7%
- 8am–11am965 flights68.0%
- 11am–2pm735 flights70.7%
- 2pm–5pm717 flights60.2%
- 5pm–8pm555 flights60.9%
- 8pm–5am504 flights63.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 82.7% of the time, against 60.2% for the afternoon window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 965 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to DFW through the year
June is the worst month at 59.1% on time, 19 points below February, the best at 77.8%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 394 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.2%. 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 45% of the 120,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% 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 120,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 120,336 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 82.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.87%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 14.5% 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 802 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 runs 65.4% on time across 4,239 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 4,233 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 ORD to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.87% 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. 4,032 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to DFW73.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DFW71.9%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to DFW68.0%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to DFW63.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.