Route reliability record
DEN→DAL
Denver to Dallas
- Flights
- 2,968
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 651 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,968 DEN to DAL flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.9% of the time and Saturday flights 77.4%, against 71.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,914 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
71.3% on time across 2,968 flights
These figures cover 2,968 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN 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 | 2,968 | 71.3% | 57 min | 1.25% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver 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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → DFWDenver to Dallas-Fort Worth | United Airlines | 77.0% | 77.5% | 0.59% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1350 09:35 |
| 2. DEN → DFWDenver to Dallas-Fort Worth | Frontier Airlines | 75.3% | 76.0% | 0.92% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. DEN → DFWDenver to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 72.3% | 74.5% | 2.96% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 852 08:00 |
| 4. DEN → DALDenver to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 70.4% | 71.3% | 1.25% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am498 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am645 flights86.6%
- 11am–2pm524 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm455 flights58.8%
- 5pm–8pm584 flights52.9%
- 8pm–5am262 flights49.8%
Scale runs 40% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.8% on time, against 92.9% 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 645 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to DAL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DEN to DAL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 49.8%, a wide gap of 43.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.9%
- 8–11am86.6%
- 11am–2pm74.2%
- 2–5pm58.8%
- 5–8pm52.9%
- 8pm–5am49.8%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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 52.1% on time, 31 points below February, the best at 83.5%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 273 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 47,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 to one. The split is drawn from 47,443 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 92.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.25% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 651 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.
The return leg runs 70.2% on time across 2,966 flights, within about 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 2,968 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. February runs 83.5% on time and June 52.1%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,914 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to DAL questions
How often is DEN to DAL delayed?
Roughly 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 28.7% of the 2,968 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to DAL compared with the rest of the country?
71.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to DAL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 49.8%, 43 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 DEN to DAL?
June is the weakest month at 52.1% on time, compared with 83.5% in February. Across the year that is 31 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 DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DEN to DAL and DAL to DEN 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.