Route reliability record
DFW→BUR
Dallas-Fort Worth to Burbank
- Flights
- 729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,231 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 729 DFW to BUR flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DFW to BUR: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.5%, against 67.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 101 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 705 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
67.5% on time across 729 flights
These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 BUR
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 729 | 67.5% | 58 min | 2.88% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to BUR
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 Burbank
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 86.2% | 87.9% | 1.95% | 5am–8am, Thu | DL 439 06:15 |
| 2. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Spirit Airlines | 78.0% | 80.2% | 2.77% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Frontier Airlines | 75.3% | 76.0% | 0.89% | 5am–8am, Thu | F9 3211 16:39 |
| 4. DFW → SNADallas-Fort Worth to Santa Ana | American Airlines | 75.2% | 77.6% | 3.08% | 5am–8am, Fri (route) | AA 2659 14:25 |
| 5. DAL → LAXDallas to Los Angeles | Southwest Airlines | 68.3% | 69.1% | 1.16% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 23 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–11am284 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm81 flights75.3%
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 5pm–8pm302 flights61.0%
- 8pm–5am59 flights52.6%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.6% on time, against 75.3% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 302 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
August is the worst month at 46.7% on time, 32 points below October, the best at 79.0%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.0%. 20 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 43% of the 13,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 13,332 reported delay minutes.
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 5,493 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.88%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 10.5% 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 1,231 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 81.7% on time across 729 flights, 14 points above 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 729 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 BUR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.88% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 705 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to BUR questions
How often is DFW to BUR delayed?
About 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 32.5% of the 729 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to BUR compared with the rest of the country?
67.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 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 BUR?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 75.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.6%, 23 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 August delays on DFW to BUR?
August is the weakest month at 46.7% on time, compared with 79.0% in October. Across the year that is 32 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
- BUR to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- LAS to BUR, a related route79.8%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- American Airlines on-time record67.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to BUR and BUR to DFW 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.