Route reliability record
DFW→ECP
Dallas-Fort Worth to Panama City
- Flights
- 1,276
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 685 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 1,276 DFW to ECP flights, of which Envoy Air flew 687 at 79.5% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to ECP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.8%, against 74.4% 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
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,236 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.74%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
79.5% on time across 687 flights
These figures cover 1,276 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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 ECP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 687 | 79.5% | 47 min | 1.75% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 449 | 73.9% | 75 min | 4.45% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 140 | 51.1% | 80 min | 2.14% | F |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Panama City
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → ECPDallas-Fort Worth to Panama City | Envoy Air | 78.1% | 79.5% | 1.75% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → ECPDallas-Fort Worth to Panama City | PSA Airlines | 70.6% | 73.9% | 4.45% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DFW → VPSDallas-Fort Worth to Valparaiso | American Airlines | 60.5% | 62.1% | 2.65% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 2501 13:10 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 37 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am71 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am328 flights85.6%
- 11am–2pm356 flights70.1%
- 2pm–5pm172 flights53.3%
- 5pm–8pm254 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am95 flights74.4%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 53.3% for the afternoon window. That is 37 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to ECP 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 ECP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.0% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 53.3%, a wide gap of 36.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.0%
- 8–11am85.6%
- 11am–2pm70.1%
- 2–5pm53.3%
- 5–8pm76.2%
- 8pm–5am74.4%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 56.7% on time, 29 points below January, the best at 85.5%. 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 173 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.0%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 20,064 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.74%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
8.8% 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 685 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 77.9% on time across 1,277 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 1,276 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 ECP 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. January runs 85.5% on time and July 56.7%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,236 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ECP questions
How often is DFW to ECP 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 25.6% of the 1,276 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to ECP?
Envoy Air leads at 79.5% on time across 687 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 73.9%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to ECP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 53.3%, 37 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 ECP?
July is the weakest month at 56.7% on time, compared with 85.5% in January. Across the year that is 29 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
- ECP to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to ECP79.5%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to ECP73.9%
- American Airlines on DFW to ECP51.1%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to ECP, a related route83.2%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.5%
- PSA Airlines on-time record73.9%
- American Airlines on-time record51.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to ECP and ECP 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.