Route reliability record
DCA→DAL
Washington to Dallas
- Flights
- 1,735
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,184 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 1,735 DCA to DAL flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DCA to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.4%, 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 1,694 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.1% on time across 1,735 flights
These figures cover 1,735 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 DCA to DAL
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 | 1,735 | 73.1% | 65 min | 1.84% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Washington to Dallas
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. IAD → DFWWashington to Dallas-Fort Worth | United Airlines | 79.2% | 79.8% | 0.77% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 2116 17:50 |
| 2. DCA → DFWWashington to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 75.0% | 77.6% | 3.39% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1978 07:45 |
| 3. BWI → DALBaltimore to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 74.8% | 76.2% | 1.87% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. DCA → DALWashington to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 71.8% | 73.1% | 1.84% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. IAD → DFWWashington to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 70.6% | 73.3% | 3.67% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 2617 06:00 |
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 31 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–8am365 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am239 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm235 flights77.5%
- 2pm–5pm342 flights69.3%
- 5pm–8pm290 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am264 flights65.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 89.0% 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 58.7% on time, 23 points below January, the best at 82.0%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.1%. 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 48% of the 29,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
48% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 29,433 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 89.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.52%.
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. 9.9% 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 1,184 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 68.0% on time across 1,735 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 1,735 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 DAL 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. January runs 82.0% on time and June 58.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,694 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to DAL questions
How often is DCA to DAL 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 1,735 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DCA to DAL 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 DCA to DAL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.6%, 31 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 DCA to DAL?
June is the weakest month at 58.7% on time, compared with 82.0% in January. Across the year that is 23 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
- DAL to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- 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. DCA to DAL and DAL to DCA 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.