Route reliability record
DFW→CLE
Dallas-Fort Worth to Cleveland
- Flights
- 1,652
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,021 mi
- Carriers
- 4
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 1,652 DFW to CLE flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly DFW to CLE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.7%, against 66.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 113 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,606 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
64.0% on time across 1,457 flights
These figures cover 1,652 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 CLE
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 | 24 | 100.0% | — | 8.33% | A− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 166 | 81.2% | 96 min | 0.60% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,457 | 64.0% | 66 min | 2.81% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 50.0% | 40 min | 20.00% | F− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to CLE
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.
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 28 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–8am185 flights86.3%
- 8am–11am372 flights76.5%
- 11am–2pm255 flights61.6%
- 2pm–5pm220 flights59.3%
- 5pm–8pm400 flights58.1%
- 8pm–5am220 flights58.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.1% on time, against 86.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 400 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 76.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 170 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.6%. 16 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 50% of the 37,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 36,629 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 86.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.72%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 11.4% 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 1,021 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 74.8% on time across 1,653 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,652 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 CLE 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. September runs 76.1% on time and March 54.3%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,606 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to CLE questions
How often is DFW to CLE 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 33.7% of the 1,652 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
66.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 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 CLE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.1%, 28 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 March delays on DFW to CLE?
March is the weakest month at 54.3% on time, compared with 76.1% in September. Across the year that is 22 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
- CLE to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to CLE81.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to CLE64.0%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.2%
- American Airlines on-time record64.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to CLE and CLE 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.