American Airlines is trying to improve the financial mess that it’s in (at least in comparison to Delta and United), and management at the airline realizes that this requires focusing on the customer. This includes everything from investing in better business class seats, to serving better champagne, to sometimes holding flights for passengers running late.
Ultimately the one thing that matters most to customers is operational reliability. And along those lines, American has just announced what I’d consider to be a very positive development concerning that.
American is padding flight schedules to improve reliability
American has announced a variety of initiatives intended to improve operational reliability at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW), which is the carrier’s biggest hub. For example, flights are “banked,” meaning that they all arrive and depart around the same time, in order to make connections as efficient as possible.
For more than a decade, American has had nine daily banks at DFW, while starting in April 2026, the airline will increase that to 13 daily banks. So that will not only reduce peak crowding, but it’ll also give customers more options as to how long of a connection they want. Instead of the option of a one hour connection or four hour connection, maybe you’ll now have the option of a two or three hour connection.
I’d argue that the most interesting change that American has announced is that the airline also plans to increase block times for flights across its network, essentially increasing schedule padding. Here’s how the airline describes this:
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.
Are increased block times at American a good thing?
Many of us joke that when airlines pad their schedules, they’re really just trying to improve their on-time statistics with the Department of Transportation (DOT), since that data compare the actual arrival time to the scheduled arrival time. Obviously the more time you schedule for a flight, the better your odds of the flight being on-time.
While we don’t know exactly how much American plans to pad its schedule, there’s also no denying that this is a huge financial investment. For one, aircraft utilization is reduced when each flight takes longer, since you can’t operate as many flights in a day. Furthermore, crews have to be paid based on the longer block time, so this will lead to increased labor costs.
At the same time, I’d say this is absolutely positive for customers. If you simply put a little more slack into the operation, odds are much better that things will run smoothly. Flights are more likely to arrive on-time or even early, so it reduces odds of having to wait for a gate to open up. It also increases the chances that passengers and bags make their connections.
The fundamental issue here is that airlines create minimum connection times that are unrealistically short, and which truly only work under the best of circumstances. The reason they have these short minimum connection times is because they want to be able to schedule as many flights as possible, and when passengers shop for flights, they also want total travel time to be as short as possible, since that’s appealing to people.
But at DFW, for example, the minimum connection time is 50 minutes. Imagine that you’re seated in the back of the plane, that you have to change terminals, and that you still have to be at your connecting flight at least 20 minutes before departure. That can be challenging even if everything goes right, but if there’s even a tiny delay, you’re often screwed.
So as far as I’m concerned, anything that makes it more realistic for passengers to make their connections is a good thing.
Bottom line
In the coming months, American will be increasing its block time for flights, meaning there will be some extra padding in flight schedules. While I’m not generally a fan of airlines overly padding their schedules, this seems like a good move for American, given how the airline has struggled with reliability, at least compared to Delta.
Putting a little bit of extra slack in the schedule should help more passengers make connections. I’m happy to see that American is actually focused on improving the connecting experience, given that it’s primarily one huge, domestic airline.
What do you make of American increasing schedule padding?
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