It seems like a time-honored tradition for me to write about American’s operational problems. I suppose when an airline has them so consistently, that’s just how it goes. But today is different. If you listen to American, they’ll say things are going great. In fact, I was given a lengthy statement with all their accomplishments, which includes:
- May 2026 was our second-best May for arrival performance (A-0) in the past decade.
- The only stronger May was May 2023, but May 2026 had 23% more departures than 2023.
- May 29 was our best single day summer performance in the history of our airline.
- Our May [Net Promoter Score] was better than the past two years.
- May was our best May for [Mishandled Baggage Rate (MBR)]. DOT reporting for April MBR (the latest reporting) has American in 6th place (Page 35) with a YTD ranking also showing improvement.
But not all is well in reality. Today I want to zoom in on some of the painpoints that came out of my digging through Anuvu operational performance data. I have four charts to help drive this discussion.
Overall, American has been doing ok compared to the other big airlines. No, it isn’t going to win any gold medals, but it was at least doing better than JetBlue in most months even if it was trailing the other big airlines. But now, it’s summer, and things have not been going well. For June through the 24th of the month, American had 70.0 percent of flights arrive within 14 minutes of schedule. Only Southwest was lower at a dismal 64.6 percent, but Southwest made a tradeoff of canceling less. It completed 99.3 percent of flights while American only completed 96.2 percent.
You’ll remember American made noise by rescheduling Dallas/Fort Worth and Philly to improve the operation, but I don’t see much of that in the high-level data. Maybe the storms are snarling too much, but you’d have hoped to see something look better here despite American apparently being pleased with its progress.
There has been plenty of focus on DFW and, of course, O’Hare which is bursting at the seams, but the biggest problem child may very well be a dark horse… Washington/National (DCA).
American DCA Departures vs AA System
data via Anuvu
This chart shows B0 and A14 for American’s DCA departures compared to the whole system. Let’s talk about exactly what you’re seeing.
A14 means arrivals within 14 minutes of schedule, and as you can see, it has been on a steady downward slope compared to the system for years now. That huge downward spike you see in early 2025 is after the accident of American 5342 and the airport remained in operational flux for awhile, which I’d expect. But it has remained well below the rest of the system since then.
Part of the issue may be B0, which means the percent of time that flights operate within their scheduled block time. So, it could depart 10 hours late, but if the flight is supposed to take 94 minutes from gate to gate and it completes the flight within that time, it counts in B0. What we see here is that American has not met system B0 average from DCA since 2024 except for a brief stint earlier this year. With some of the retiming the airline did recently, you’d think DCA could get up to system level this summer, but it’s not looking good.
DCA is a problem child right now. And then there’s Chicago/O’Hare (ORD).
American ORD Departures vs United
data via Anuvu
With the dramatic ramp-up of service at ORD between United and American, I’ve been watching this market quite closely. And I sliced and diced this a bunch of different ways. In the end, I decided to go with a more zoomed-in look going back only to April 1 of this year.
This chart shows A14, arrivals within 14 minutes of schedule, for all ORD departures. What we see is that up until the FAA restrictions on capacity went into place, American was actually outperforming United. But then, June arrived, and American has had a very ugly month. It is consistently worse than United right now, and sometimes by a lot. The real takeaway here seems to be that at least recently, United is much better at recovering from a mass weather disruption than American is. You can see it in here clearly that often when the A14 rates tank, United is quicker to get back to where it was.
Now, we have to look at DFW, don’t we? After all, it’s DFW that has received the bulk of the focus from American when the new structure went into place in April… along with the bulk of the weather lately.
American DFW Operational Stats
data via Anuvu
Here I decided to use a different metric, D0 which is departures that leave the gate on-time or earlier. I figure that with this new bank structure, things should run more smoothly with less traffic throughout the day, so D0 should rise. It did not. Remember, the new structure went into place in April, and it has been only downhill from there. Maybe it’s weather, and things actually are better will all else being equal… or maybe not. Here’s how American talks about the weather lately:
June has been challenging with weather, but even with that, the progress is clear. For some perspective, we’ve had more of our most severe events at our hubs so far this June than any other full month in our history. Despite very challenging weather at our largest hubs, we are seeing improved arrival performance year-over-year.
I also have B0 in here so you can see that these new block times may have improved performance versus last spring, but it’s not better than it had been in winter.
Lastly, I put TXO which is taxi-out time. This is how long it takes for planes to get from the gate to the runway. This is no different compared to last year, and it’s slightly higher than in the winter. This is somewhat puzzling to me. If you have fewer airplanes in concentrated banks, you would think your taxi-out times would drop. But that wasn’t the case.
Lastly, let’s move on to the land where weather disruptions almost never happen… Los Angeles (LAX).
American LAX Ops vs Delta/United
data via Anuvu
Once again I took A14 rates here, but I’m comparing the big three at the airport, American, Delta, and United. Right up until the end of 2024, American was right in the mix on performance, but then something changed. It has now fallen well below both Delta and United. What is going on?
Yes, there is construction at the airport and that has been particularly focused on American’s terminals. But that isn’t a good excuse. It’s not like American didn’t know it had construction going on. It needs to schedule differently if this is a construction issue. Or perhaps this is a problem with how the rest of the system is impacting the airline in LAX. That dip in June would suggest that might be the case to some extent. That could be due to too many aircraft routing through too many hubs and impacting the entire operation. I haven’t done that deep analysis.
Overall what this looks like is an airline that isn’t preparing itself as well for disruptions as others are, and then it’s also not as good at recovering when things do go wrong. This doesn’t even take into account tech and customer service and all of that. This is just me looking for themes in the data.
Like I said, American isn’t running a terrible operation, and it seems almost giddy with how things are going. But after all these years, there is still a lot it should do better.
