Route reliability record
DAL→BHM
Dallas to Birmingham
- Flights
- 975
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 587 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 975 DAL to BHM flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAL to BHM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 78.8%, against 72.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 957 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
72.2% on time across 975 flights
These figures cover 975 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 DAL to BHM
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 | 975 | 72.2% | 55 min | 1.64% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas to Birmingham
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → BHMDallas-Fort Worth to Birmingham | Envoy Air | 78.9% | 80.4% | 1.89% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DAL → BHMDallas to Birmingham | Southwest Airlines | 71.0% | 72.2% | 1.64% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DFW → BHMDallas-Fort Worth to Birmingham | PSA Airlines | 69.0% | 71.5% | 3.52% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 32 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–8am25 flights—
- 8am–11am251 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm98 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm264 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm98 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am239 flights55.4%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.4% on time, against 87.6% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 264 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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 51.8% on time, 37 points below January, the best at 89.2%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.7%. 14 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 55% of the 15,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
55% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 14,615 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.0% 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 last about 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 587 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 80.1% on time across 977 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 975 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BHM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 975 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 957 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAL to BHM questions
How often is DAL to BHM delayed?
Roughly 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 27.8% of the 975 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is DAL to BHM compared with the rest of the country?
72.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAL to BHM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.4%, 32 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 DAL to BHM?
June is the weakest month at 51.8% on time, compared with 89.2% in January. Across the year that is 37 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
- BHM to DAL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- ATL to BHM, a related route84.0%
- DAL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.2%
- 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. DAL to BHM and BHM to DAL 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.