Carrier route record
DLDFW→BOS
Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Boston
- Flights
- 861
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DFW to BOS lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 861 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on DFW to BOS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 838 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.1%
Every carrier on DFW to BOS, 3,744 flights
These figures cover 861 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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
Delta against every carrier on DFW to BOS
Delta flew 861 of the 3,744 flights on DFW to BOS, about 23% of it. Its 77.4% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.4% to Spirit at 46.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 861 | 77.4% | 100 min | 2.44% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,639 | 64.7% | 69 min | 3.45% | D− |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 231 | 55.9% | 105 min | 3.46% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 46.2% | 70 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DFW to BOS
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 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–8am347 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm211 flights65.4%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm297 flights72.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. 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 65.4% on time against 89.3% for 5am–8am. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 347 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DFW to BOS through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 63.5%. January is the strongest month at 87.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. July was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 75.2%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 7,696 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 18,825 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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.
At 1,562 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.0% on time across 861 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 861 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on DFW to BOS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 861 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 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 838 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to BOS, every carrier
- Delta on BOS to DFW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DFW to BOS64.7%
- JetBlue Airways on DFW to BOS55.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.