Route reliability record
DAL→LIT
Dallas to Little Rock
- Flights
- 1,034
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 296 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,034 DAL to LIT flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAL to LIT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.1%, against 73.1% 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 45 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,026 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.1% on time across 1,034 flights
These figures cover 1,034 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 DAL to LIT
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 | 1,034 | 73.1% | 58 min | 0.68% | C+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas to Little Rock
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → LITDallas-Fort Worth to Little Rock | Envoy Air | 78.6% | 80.5% | 2.36% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → LITDallas-Fort Worth to Little Rock | SkyWest Airlines | 75.5% | 77.0% | 1.99% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 3. DAL → LITDallas to Little Rock | Southwest Airlines | 72.6% | 73.1% | 0.68% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. DFW → LITDallas-Fort Worth to Little Rock | American Airlines | 57.5% | 59.2% | 2.90% | 8am–11am, 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 41 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–8am32 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am277 flights89.1%
- 11am–2pm84 flights80.7%
- 2pm–5pm255 flights69.4%
- 5pm–8pm121 flights78.2%
- 8pm–5am265 flights52.7%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.7% on time, against 93.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 277 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 41 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 46.5% on time, 41 points below February, the best at 87.5%. 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.5%. 13 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 63% of the 16,000 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.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
63% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 15,877 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.9% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 296 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.0% on time across 1,034 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,034 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 LIT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,034 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 73.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,026 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAL to LIT questions
How often is DAL to LIT 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 26.9% of the 1,034 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DAL to LIT compared with the rest of the country?
73.1% 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 LIT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.7%, 41 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 LIT?
June is the weakest month at 46.5% on time, compared with 87.5% in February. Across the year that is 41 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
- LIT to DAL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- DFW to LIT, a related route75.8%
- DAL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.1%
- 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 LIT and LIT 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.