Route reliability record
DFW→GRR
Dallas-Fort Worth to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 982
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 931 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 982 DFW to GRR flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly DFW to GRR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 72.7%, against 67.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 950 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
66.9% on time across 960 flights
These figures cover 982 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 GRR
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 20 | 100.0% | — | 15.00% | A− |
| American Airlines | 960 | 66.9% | 69 min | 2.71% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 20 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to GRR
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am319 flights80.6%
- 11am–2pm149 flights65.7%
- 2pm–5pm152 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm300 flights56.4%
- 8pm–5am62 flights53.4%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.4% on time, against 80.6% 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 319 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to GRR 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 GRR, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 80.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 53.4%, a wide gap of 27.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am80.6%
- 11am–2pm65.7%
- 2–5pm68.2%
- 5–8pm56.4%
- 8pm–5am53.4%
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 26 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.
December is the weak month at 53.9% on time, against 79.6% in August. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 21,408 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,454 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.95%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
12.1% 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 931 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 71.2% on time across 983 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 982 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in GRR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 950 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to GRR questions
How often is DFW to GRR 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 32.5% of the 982 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 GRR compared with the rest of the country?
67.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 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 GRR?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 80.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.4%, 27 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 December delays on DFW to GRR?
December is the weakest month at 53.9% on time, compared with 79.6% in August. Across the year that is 26 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
- GRR to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to GRR, a related route69.5%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record66.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record50.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to GRR and GRR 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.