Route reliability record
DFW→DRO
Dallas-Fort Worth to Durango
- Flights
- 1,351
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 674 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,351 DFW to DRO flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to DRO: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.8%, against 76.7% 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
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,320 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.07%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.3% on time across 1,177 flights
These figures cover 1,351 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 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 | 1,177 | 79.3% | 71 min | 2.38% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 174 | 59.8% | 92 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am413 flights84.8%
- 11am–2pm142 flights84.9%
- 2pm–5pm363 flights74.8%
- 5pm–8pm191 flights61.4%
- 8pm–5am242 flights73.2%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 84.9% for the 11am–2pm 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 413 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to DRO 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 DRO, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 84.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.4%, a wide gap of 23.5 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.8%
- 11am–2pm84.9%
- 2–5pm74.8%
- 5–8pm61.4%
- 8pm–5am73.2%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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%. December is the strongest month at 83.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. July was the busiest month here, with 158 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.0%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,201 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.07% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.3% on time across 1,351 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,351 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. December runs 83.8% 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. 1,320 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to DRO questions
How often is DFW to DRO 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 23.3% of the 1,351 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
76.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 84.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm 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 September delays on DFW to DRO?
September is the weakest month at 61.3% on time, compared with 83.8% in December. 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 DRO79.3%
- American Airlines on DFW to DRO59.8%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- DEN to DRO, a related route80.2%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.3%
- American Airlines on-time record59.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.