12/26/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/26/2025 14:21
FORT WORTH, Texas - American Airlines is fundamentally changing the way it does business at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), the airline's largest hub, and the airline's customers will soon benefit from those changes in a meaningful way.
DFW has an outsized impact on the rest of the airline's operation and on the journeys of the nearly 700,000 customers the airline serves every day across its global network. More customers and more bags travel and connect through DFW every day than any other airport in American's network - with more than 30% of all daily connecting customers and daily connecting checked bags traveling through the airline's hometown airport. When DFW runs well, American runs well. That impact demands continued focus and investment, and both are already well underway. The airline is investing millions of dollars to fortify DFW, delivering:
For more than a decade, American's schedule at DFW has been concentrated across nine banks, or large clusters of flights across the operating day. As all airline bank structures do, this times large groups of flights together, coordinating arrivals and departures, and ultimately, coordinating quick and seamless connections.
Beginning in April - and visible in the airline's schedules starting Dec. 27 - American's DFW operation is evolving to a 13-bank structure, providing more certainty to the airline's average 100,000 peak daily customers traveling on the more than 930 average peak DFW daily departing flights.
"As the operating environment and our customers' expectations have evolved in the last 10 years, our approach at our largest and most impactful hub must also evolve," said Jim Moses, Senior Vice President of DFW Operations. "We're making this significant shift while maintaining the same breadth, depth and schedule quality our customers expect and depend on. That means good things for American's customers, our team members and just about everyone who depends on the airline."
With this structural schedule change, customers will also benefit from more improved early-morning departure times compared to 2025. Specifically, they will experience more departure options in highly desired time windows and fewer early morning departures to DFW, which is especially good news for customers making morning connections through DFW.
In addition to the airline's DFW schedule, American is making a bold and unprecedented investment in block time for flights to and from DFW and across the airline's network. Block time - the total scheduled time between pushback from the departure gate to arrival at the destination gate - determines how long a customer's trip feels.
With this investment in American's customers, the airline is ensuring more on-time departures that lead to more on-time arrivals and fewer delays, all creating an overall smoother and improved travel experience. In short, American is bolstering its ability to get its customers and their bags where they're going and on time.
As American spreads out its DFW flight schedule across the day, the airline is also spreading out customer volume, including everything from local customers arriving in parking garages, checking in at lobbies and clearing security to connecting customers making their way through American's terminals to their next flights.
These changes are on top of a number of other critical investments to further enhance the customer experience when traveling through American's Flagship hub, and importantly, enabling future growth, which means more flight and destination options for our customers. That includes:
No other airline recovers from bad weather and irregular operations better than American, and the airline has demonstrated that time and time again. Having the airline's largest hub at DFW provides immeasurable benefits to American's customers and the broader airline, including the ability to easily connect through an airport centrally located in the U.S.
With all the benefits DFW brings, it has also recently experienced a disproportionate amount of bad weather, particularly thunderstorms that can require the entire airport to be paused until the conditions clear. When that happens in the future, this new schedule structure will provide far greater resilience and less adverse impact, allowing American to recover even quicker and get customers on their way as soon as the weather clears.
"Our investment in operational resilience extends beyond our DFW schedule," said Moses. "We know the negative impact flight diversions have on our customers. They're also incredibly disruptive to the broader airline, especially as they create congestion at airports which often limits our ability to get aircraft to a gate and importantly, deplane customers."
At DFW, American is investing millions of dollars in additional remote deplaning capability (everything from equipment and bussing to staffing) that allows the airline to most importantly, divert fewer flights away from DFW.
About American Airlines Group
As a leading global airline, American Airlines offers thousands of flights per day to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries. The airline is a founding member of the oneworld alliance, whose members serve more than 900 destinations around the globe. Shares of American Airlines Group Inc. trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AAL. Learn more about what's happening at American by visiting news.aa.com and connect with American @AmericanAir and at Facebook.com/AmericanAirlines. To Care for People on Life's Journey®.