Route reliability record
DAL→LAX
Dallas to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,470
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,246 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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,470 DAL to LAX flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DAL to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 75.9%, against 69.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 85 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,451 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
69.1% on time across 1,470 flights
These figures cover 1,470 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DAL to LAX
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 | 1,470 | 69.1% | 50 min | 1.16% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas to Los Angeles
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 86.2% | 87.9% | 1.95% | 5am–8am, Thu | DL 439 06:15 |
| 2. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Spirit Airlines | 78.0% | 80.2% | 2.77% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Frontier Airlines | 75.3% | 76.0% | 0.89% | 5am–8am, Thu | F9 3211 16:39 |
| 4. DFW → SNADallas-Fort Worth to Santa Ana | American Airlines | 75.2% | 77.6% | 3.08% | 5am–8am, Fri (route) | AA 2659 14:25 |
| 5. DAL → LAXDallas to Los Angeles | Southwest Airlines | 68.3% | 69.1% | 1.16% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 44 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–8am265 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am230 flights83.3%
- 11am–2pm261 flights69.0%
- 2pm–5pm150 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm292 flights53.7%
- 8pm–5am272 flights49.3%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.3% on time, against 92.8% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 292 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 40 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 46.4% on time, 40 points below September, the best at 86.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.9%. 15 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 49% of the 22,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 22,277 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 8,643 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.16% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
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 last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,246 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 runs 68.5% on time across 1,471 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,470 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 LAX 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. September runs 86.3% on time and June 46.4%, a swing of 40 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,451 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAL to LAX questions
How often is DAL to LAX delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.9% of the 1,470 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is DAL to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
69.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 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 LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 49.3%, 44 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 LAX?
June is the weakest month at 46.4% on time, compared with 86.3% in September. Across the year that is 40 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
- LAX to DAL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- DAL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.1%
- 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 LAX and LAX 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.