Route reliability record
DFW→CLT
Dallas-Fort Worth to Charlotte
- Flights
- 3,904
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 935 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,904 DFW to CLT flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 78.2%, against 74.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,804 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
74.1% on time across 3,620 flights
These figures cover 3,904 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to CLT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 77.0% | 73 min | 3.52% | B− |
| American Airlines | 3,620 | 74.1% | 65 min | 2.21% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to CLT
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.
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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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am959 flights86.2%
- 8am–11am731 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm456 flights75.7%
- 2pm–5pm635 flights62.9%
- 5pm–8pm753 flights67.7%
- 8pm–5am370 flights57.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.2% on time, against 86.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 959 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to CLT by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DFW to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.2%, a wide gap of 29.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.2%
- 8–11am82.5%
- 11am–2pm75.7%
- 2–5pm62.9%
- 5–8pm67.7%
- 8pm–5am57.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 61.5% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 80.4%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 361 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.8%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 64,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 64,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 63,724 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 22,000 of the 64,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.31% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 935 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.7% on time across 3,904 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,904 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 CLT 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 80.4% on time and June 61.5%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,804 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to CLT questions
How often is DFW to CLT delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.7% of the 3,904 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
74.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 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 CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.2%, 29 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 CLT?
June is the weakest month at 61.5% on time, compared with 80.4% in September. Across the year that is 19 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
- CLT to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to CLT77.0%
- American Airlines on DFW to CLT74.1%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.0%
- American Airlines on-time record74.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to CLT and CLT 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.