Route reliability record
DFW→ATL
Dallas-Fort Worth to Atlanta
- Flights
- 76,870
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 730 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 75.9%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 76,870 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 75.9%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 75,152 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.06%
National rate is 2.23%
Best carrier
Horizon
80.3% on time across 76,870 flights
These figures cover 77,000 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 DFW to ATL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Horizon Air | 76,870 | 80.3% | 50 min | 2.06% | B |
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 19 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–8am11,915 flights86.3%
- 8am–11am15,758 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm14,221 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm13,452 flights77.3%
- 5pm–8pm13,837 flights67.3%
- 8pm–5am7,687 flights76.3%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.3% of the time, against 67.3% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 76,870 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 75.8% on time, 11 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.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 2 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 659,000 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 8%, so this operation carries roughly 1.5 times the usual weather exposure.
Cancellations sit at 2.06% against a national 2.23%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.6%. 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 are the about 45 minutes kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 730 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.
76,870 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 67.3% on time against 86.3% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 19 points is the largest single thing you control here. Horizon Air is the strongest operator if the fares are close.
Common questions
DFW to ATL questions
How often is DFW to ATL delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.7% of the 76,870 flights in this analysis, against 24.1% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is DFW to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
80.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 75.9%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.3%, 19 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 July delays on DFW to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 75.8% on time, compared with 86.3% in September. Across the year that is 11 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
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Horizon Air on-time record80.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 11.3 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
The reverse direction, ATL to DFW, does not clear this site’s 365-flight floor and has no page of its own.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.