Route reliability record
DFW→FAT
Dallas-Fort Worth to Fresno
- Flights
- 1,351
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,313 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,351 DFW to FAT flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DFW to FAT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 71.1%, against 65.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,316 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
65.3% on time across 1,351 flights
These figures cover 1,351 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 FAT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,351 | 65.3% | 69 min | 2.52% | C |
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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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am309 flights80.9%
- 11am–2pm209 flights64.7%
- 2pm–5pm207 flights63.2%
- 5pm–8pm159 flights54.5%
- 8pm–5am467 flights59.7%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 80.9% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 467 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to FAT 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 FAT, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 80.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 54.5%, a wide gap of 26.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am80.9%
- 11am–2pm64.7%
- 2–5pm63.2%
- 5–8pm54.5%
- 8pm–5am59.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 45.5% on time, 32 points below August, the best at 77.1%. 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 31,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 31,353 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.52%, against 1.89% 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
11.7% 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 1,313 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 80.9% on time across 1,351 flights, 16 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 16 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 FAT 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. August runs 77.1% on time and June 45.5%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,316 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to FAT questions
How often is DFW to FAT 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 34.7% 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 FAT compared with the rest of the country?
65.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 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 FAT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 80.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 54.5%, 26 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 FAT?
June is the weakest month at 45.5% on time, compared with 77.1% in August. Across the year that is 32 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
- FAT to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- SAN to FAT, a related route77.8%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- American Airlines on-time record65.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to FAT and FAT 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.