AA971

AA971 arrived on time 86.4% of the time, against 76.9% for all LAX → DFW flights, so this departure is 9.5 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against American Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 9.7 points better.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 630 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AA971 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

This flight runs unusually far ahead of the carrier's own average on this route, better than 91% of 11,589 comparable flight numbers.

86.4% on time for this specific departure, against 76.7% for the same carrier's other flights on this route.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AA971 on LAX → DFW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AA971 pushed back an average of 22 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 3 minutes late.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into LAX just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 606 of 622 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

AA971 pushes back an average of 10.8 minutes late and reaches the gate at DFW an average of 2.6 minutes early. The 13.4 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 15.9 minutes on the taxiways at LAX, 1.2 minutes shorter than a typical LAX departure in the same hour.

On arrival at DFW, AA971 spends 8.4 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 5.1 minutes shorter than a typical DFW arrival (13.5 min).

Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached DFW. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 5,020 departures from LAX scheduled in the clock hour AA971 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DFW (961,642 flights), not just AA971’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

AA971 is scheduled out of LAX at 12:45 AM, in the 12 AM–1 AM bank. Departures from LAX in that hour arrive on time 85.4% of the time against 81.4% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 4.0 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from LAX to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AA971 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AA971 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.

• AA2811 LAX→DFW American Airlines on the same route, departs 6:00 AM, on time 86.8%
• DL420 LAX→DFW Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 6:59 PM, on time 81.5%
• DL521 LAX→DFW Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 8:35 AM, on time 84.9%