Carrier route record

AAPHX→DFW

American Airlines · Phoenix to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 4,577
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 89%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on PHX to DFW lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 4,577 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on PHX to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,433 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.75%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.9%

Every carrier on PHX to DFW, 5,167 flights

These figures cover 4,577 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on PHX to DFW

American flew 4,577 of the 5,167 flights on PHX to DFW, most of the route. Its 80.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Frontier at 79.0%. Three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	12	91.7%	24 min	0.00%	A+
Envoy Airthin sample	10	90.0%	61 min	0.00%	A+
American Airlines (this page)	4,577	80.0%	78 min	2.75%	B
Frontier Airlines	567	79.0%	91 min	1.76%	B

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 25 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–8am1,229 flights90.1%
8am–11am826 flights85.9%
11am–2pm855 flights79.6%
2pm–5pm727 flights65.6%
5pm–8pm635 flights70.3%
8pm–5am305 flights76.9%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.1% of the time, against 65.6% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 1,229 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on PHX to DFW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, July worst

July is the worst month at 70.6% on time, 16 points below April, the best at 86.4%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 440 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.6%. 5 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 69,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

34% 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 69,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 69,099 reported delay minutes.

32% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 22,000 minutes out of 69,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 2.75%, 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

6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 868 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 70.9% on time across 4,581 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 4,577 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 PHX to DFW

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 86.4% on time and July 70.6%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,433 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures