Route reliability record
CLT→DFW
Charlotte to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 3,881
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 935 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,881 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
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
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,765 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
78.6% on time across 3,600 flights
These figures cover 3,881 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 CLT 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 39 | 87.2% | 104 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 3,600 | 78.6% | 69 min | 2.53% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 74.2% | 82 min | 3.31% | C− |
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 24 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–8am668 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am519 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm798 flights79.0%
- 2pm–5pm726 flights75.2%
- 5pm–8pm514 flights65.6%
- 8pm–5am656 flights72.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 65.6% for the evening window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 798 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 69.8% on time, 15 points below September, the best at 84.8%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 353 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.5%. 8 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 57,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 57,461 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 57,000 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 run at 2.55%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
7.6% 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 a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 935 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 73.7% on time across 3,882 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,881 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. September runs 84.8% on time and August 69.8%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,765 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to DFW questions
How often is CLT to DFW delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.6% of the 3,881 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
78.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to DFW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.6%, 24 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 CLT to DFW?
August is the weakest month at 69.8% on time, compared with 84.8% in September. 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 CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on-time record87.2%
- American Airlines on-time record78.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. CLT to DFW and DFW to CLT 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.