Route reliability record
DFW→DAY
Dallas-Fort Worth to Dayton
- Flights
- 1,362
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 861 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,362 DFW to DAY flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to DAY: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.7%, against 75.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,324 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
75.4% on time across 1,362 flights
These figures cover 1,362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 DAY
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 1,362 | 75.4% | 86 min | 2.50% | B |
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 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–8am—
- 8am–11am469 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm153 flights80.7%
- 2pm–5pm313 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm340 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am87 flights61.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 85.7% 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 469 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.
June is the worst month at 63.8% on time, 22 points below October, the best at 85.6%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.8%. 11 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 51% of the 28,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,153 reported delay minutes.
51% 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 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 2.50%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 11.7% 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 861 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 79.0% on time across 1,364 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,362 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 DAY 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. October runs 85.6% on time and June 63.8%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,324 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to DAY questions
How often is DFW to DAY 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 24.6% of the 1,362 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DFW to DAY compared with the rest of the country?
75.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to DAY?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.4%, 24 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 DAY?
June is the weakest month at 63.8% on time, compared with 85.6% in October. 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
- DAY to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ORD to DAY, a related route65.3%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record75.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to DAY and DAY to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to DAY’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.