Route reliability record
CLE→DFW
Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,653
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,021 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,653 CLE to DFW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.2% of the time and Thursday flights 79.3%, against 74.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
74.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,593 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
74.9% on time across 1,458 flights
These figures cover 1,653 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 | 1,458 | 74.9% | 100 min | 2.81% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 166 | 73.3% | 60 min | 0.60% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 50.0% | 53 min | 20.00% | F− |
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.
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 27 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–8am511 flights83.2%
- 8am–11am184 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm396 flights76.6%
- 2pm–5pm212 flights71.5%
- 5pm–8pm293 flights60.9%
- 8pm–5am57 flights55.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 83.2% 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 511 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.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 170 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 65.5%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 38,037 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 15,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.72%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.3% on time across 1,652 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,653 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. 1,593 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 25.2% of the 1,653 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
74.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C 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 83.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.8%, 27 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 DFW74.9%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to DFW73.3%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.4%
- American Airlines on-time record74.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.