Route reliability record
AMA→DFW
Amarillo to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,370
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 312 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 2,370 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,307 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
85.0% on time across 1,970 flights
These figures cover 2,370 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 DFW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,970 | 85.0% | 71 min | 2.34% | A |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 84.2% | 182 min | 3.39% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 282 | 82.7% | 121 min | 1.42% | B |
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 12 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–8am756 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am344 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm345 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm477 flights77.8%
- 5pm–8pm349 flights78.3%
- 8pm–5am99 flights78.7%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.2% of the time, against 77.8% for the afternoon window. That is 12 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 756 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
August is the worst month at 77.4% on time, 15 points below February, the best at 92.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 227 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.7%. 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 43% of the 29,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 17% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 29,474 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations sit at 2.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% 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 are the an hour and a half kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 312 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 81.3% on time across 2,371 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,370 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 92.3% on time and August 77.4%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,307 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AMA to DFW questions
How often is AMA to DFW delayed?
About one flight in seven arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.3% of the 2,370 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is AMA to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
84.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AMA to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 77.8%, 12 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 August delays on AMA to DFW?
August is the weakest month at 77.4% on time, compared with 92.3% in February. Across the year that is 15 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
- DFW to AMA — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record85.0%
- American Airlines on-time record84.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.7%
- 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 DFW and DFW to AMA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.