Route reliability record
CLE→DFW
Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,615
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,021 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,615 CLE to DFW flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.6%, against 76.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,567 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
76.2% on time across 1,422 flights
These figures cover 1,615 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLE 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 Airthin sample | 24 | 86.4% | 37 min | 8.33% | A− |
| American Airlines | 1,422 | 76.2% | 98 min | 2.32% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 169 | 74.1% | 59 min | 1.18% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE to DFW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am455 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am197 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm396 flights78.6%
- 2pm–5pm204 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm274 flights61.7%
- 8pm–5am89 flights54.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.8% on time, against 85.8% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 455 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLE to DFW by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CLE to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 54.8%, a wide gap of 31.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.8%
- 8–11am77.8%
- 11am–2pm78.6%
- 2–5pm76.1%
- 5–8pm61.7%
- 8pm–5am54.8%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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.
June is the worst month at 63.6% on time, 19 points below October, the best at 82.7%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.1%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 34,692 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.68%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,021 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.8% on time across 1,612 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,615 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 DFW 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. October runs 82.7% on time and June 63.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,567 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to DFW questions
How often is CLE to DFW delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.9% of the 1,615 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CLE to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
76.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.8%, 31 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 June delays on CLE to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 82.7% in October. 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
- DFW to CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- American Airlines on CLE to DFW76.2%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to DFW74.1%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.5%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- CLE to ATL, a related route84.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.4%
- American Airlines on-time record76.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CLE to DFW and DFW to CLE 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.