Unfortunately American Airlines seems to struggle with the operational metrics measured in the December 2015 DOT Air Travel Consumer Report.

American is now ranked behind Spirit, while Delta, Virgin America and Alaska came out on top.

Here's a chart I created:


Personally, I was stuck for 6 hours at Dallas the other day on a flight to Miami which was supposed to be operated by a B777-200 - I guess I learned my lesson and will from now on avoid this type of aircraft as it seems notoriously unreliable

The worst was how American handled the situation. They first told us that it was only gonna be an hour delay, told us that we had to leave the aircraft while the installed a component, but that we could leave our stuff on-board (BIG MISTAKE!)
The hour turned into two, then three hours when they finally told us to get our stuff in groups of 10 (nearly took an hour for everyone to grab their carry-ons) - but still no update on an estimated departure time.

It was nearly comical as they then changed equipment, sending us passengers from Terminal A to Terminal D. At this point, I had enough and got myself re-booked. There was a half-empty (!) flight to Miami leaving two gates away in the meantime, but of course they only told people to go over there after boarding had already started for that flight - it was a mess.