Route reliability record
DFW→AVL
Dallas-Fort Worth to Asheville
- Flights
- 725
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 848 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 725 DFW to AVL flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to AVL: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.5%, against 70.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 69 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 703 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
63.7% on time across 431 flights
These figures cover 725 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 DFW to AVL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 275 | 81.2% | 77 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 19 | 72.2% | 235 min | 5.26% | C− |
| American Airlines | 431 | 63.7% | 83 min | 3.48% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to AVL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Asheville
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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → GSPDallas-Fort Worth to Greer | American Airlines | 62.2% | 64.5% | 3.58% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → AVLDallas-Fort Worth to Asheville | American Airlines | 61.5% | 63.7% | 3.48% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
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 12 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–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights65.9%
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm260 flights77.7%
- 8pm–5am95 flights69.2%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 65.9% on time against 77.7% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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 50.9% on time, 33 points below February, the best at 83.9%. 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 66 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.0%. 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 51% of the 18,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
51% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 17,506 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
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. 12.1% 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 848 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 71.2% on time across 726 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 725 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 AVL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 725 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 70.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 703 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to AVL questions
How often is DFW to AVL 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 29.3% of the 725 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DFW to AVL compared with the rest of the country?
70.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to AVL?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 77.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 65.9%, 12 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 DFW to AVL?
June is the weakest month at 50.9% on time, compared with 83.9% in February. Across the year that is 33 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
- AVL to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to AVL81.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to AVL63.7%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ATL to AVL, a related route84.8%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.2%
- PSA Airlines on-time record72.2%
- American Airlines on-time record63.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DFW to AVL and AVL to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to AVL’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.