Route reliability record
AMA→DAL
Amarillo to Dallas
- Flights
- 1,262
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 323 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,262 AMA to DAL flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly AMA to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.0%, against 87.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,246 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
87.2% on time across 1,262 flights
These figures cover 1,262 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AMA to DAL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,262 | 87.2% | 69 min | 0.95% | A+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Amarillo to Dallas
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AMA → DALAmarillo to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 86.4% | 87.2% | 0.95% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. AMA → DFWAmarillo to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 83.0% | 85.0% | 2.34% | 5am–8am, Wed | MQ 3388 12:30 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights96.1%
- 8am–11am174 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm236 flights86.8%
- 2pm–5pm185 flights82.9%
- 5pm–8pm296 flights78.4%
- 8pm–5am7 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 78.4% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 77.0%. December is the strongest month at 96.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. July was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.1%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
65% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 10,916 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 323 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.7% on time across 1,262 flights, 11 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,262 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DAL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. December runs 96.4% on time and May 77.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,246 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AMA to DAL questions
How often is AMA to DAL delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.8% of the 1,262 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is AMA to DAL compared with the rest of the country?
87.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AMA to DAL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 78.4%, 18 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are May delays on AMA to DAL?
May is the weakest month at 77.0% on time, compared with 96.4% in December. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DAL to AMA — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- AMA to DFW, a related route84.7%
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- ATL to DAL, a related route81.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record87.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. AMA to DAL and DAL to AMA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.