Route reliability record
DFW→CVG
Dallas-Fort Worth to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 1,730
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 812 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,730 DFW to CVG flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly DFW to CVG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.8%, against 68.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,670 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
68.0% on time across 1,452 flights
These figures cover 1,730 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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 CVG
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 89.7% | 33 min | 3.33% | A− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 189 | 73.5% | 112 min | 2.12% | C |
| American Airlines | 1,452 | 68.0% | 71 min | 3.24% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 23 | 63.6% | 60 min | 4.35% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 36 | 37.5% | 69 min | 11.11% | F− |
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 35 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–8am178 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am376 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm258 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm314 flights57.5%
- 5pm–8pm352 flights56.8%
- 8pm–5am252 flights50.4%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.4% on time, against 85.5% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 376 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
July is the worst month at 52.6% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 77.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 164 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.3%. 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 53% of the 39,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
53% 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 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 39,081 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.29%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 11.8% 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 812 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 74.2% on time across 1,731 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,730 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 CVG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.29% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,670 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to CVG questions
How often is DFW to CVG 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 31.7% of the 1,730 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to CVG compared with the rest of the country?
68.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 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 CVG?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.4%, 35 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 July delays on DFW to CVG?
July is the weakest month at 52.6% on time, compared with 77.0% in February. Across the year that is 24 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
- CVG to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to CVG73.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to CVG68.0%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ORD to CVG, a related route72.2%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record89.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.5%
- American Airlines on-time record68.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to CVG and CVG 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.