Carrier route record
AAXNA→DFW
American Airlines · Bentonville to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 696
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on XNA 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 2.1 hours behind schedule. That rests on 696 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on XNA to DFW runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 663 completed flights
Avg delay
127 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.7%
Every carrier on XNA to DFW, 3,527 flights
These figures cover 696 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.5% 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 XNA to DFW
American flew 696 of the 3,527 flights on XNA to DFW, about 20% of it. Its 71.8% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.0% to American at 71.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 63 | 82.0% | 70 min | 3.17% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 2,435 | 81.0% | 78 min | 1.93% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 333 | 75.7% | 80 min | 4.80% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 696 | 71.8% | 127 min | 4.45% | C− |
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 29 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–8am325 flights81.5%
- 8am–11am43 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm109 flights71.2%
- 2pm–5pm86 flights52.4%
- 5pm–8pm132 flights60.8%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.5% of the time, against 52.4% for the afternoon window. That is 29 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 325 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on XNA to DFW through the year
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 55.6%. February is the strongest month at 88.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 33 points. June was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.3%. 11 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 49% of the 24,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,663 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 4.45%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.5% 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.
At 280 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 62.8% on time across 696 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 696 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 XNA to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.1 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. 663 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- XNA to DFW, every carrier
- American on DFW to XNA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on XNA to DFW81.0%
- PSA Airlines on XNA to DFW75.7%
- 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.