Route reliability record
DFW→DRO
Dallas-Fort Worth to Durango
- Flights
- 1,342
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 674 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,342 DFW to DRO flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to DRO: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.7%, against 77.3% 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
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,305 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.1% on time across 1,214 flights
These figures cover 1,342 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 DRO
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 Airlines | 1,214 | 79.1% | 71 min | 2.72% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 60.6% | 84 min | 0.78% | D+ |
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 19 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–11am408 flights84.9%
- 11am–2pm147 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm362 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm157 flights66.9%
- 8pm–5am268 flights72.9%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 66.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 408 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 61.3%. July is the strongest month at 83.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. June was the busiest month here, with 154 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.8%. 13 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. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 22,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,776 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 9,551 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.53%, 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. 9.3% 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 674 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 80.3% on time across 1,340 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 1,342 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 DRO 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. July runs 83.9% on time and September 61.3%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of September before you think about anything else. 1,305 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to DRO questions
How often is DFW to DRO delayed?
Roughly 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 22.7% of the 1,342 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 DRO compared with the rest of the country?
77.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to DRO?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.9%, 19 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 September delays on DFW to DRO?
September is the weakest month at 61.3% on time, compared with 83.9% in July. Across the year that is 23 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
- DRO to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to DRO79.1%
- American Airlines on DFW to DRO60.6%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DEN to DRO, a related route79.7%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.1%
- American Airlines on-time record60.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. DFW to DRO and DRO 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.