Route reliability record
DFW→HRL
Dallas-Fort Worth to Harlingen
- Flights
- 1,495
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 461 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,495 DFW to HRL flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to HRL: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.5%, against 84.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,448 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
84.5% on time across 1,291 flights
These figures cover 1,495 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to HRL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 204 | 84.8% | 150 min | 6.37% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,291 | 84.5% | 55 min | 2.48% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Harlingen
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → BRODallas-Fort Worth to Brownsville | Envoy Air | 82.5% | 84.7% | 2.60% | 8am–11am, Thu (route) | — |
| 2. DFW → HRLDallas-Fort Worth to Harlingen | Envoy Air | 82.4% | 84.5% | 2.48% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → MFEDallas-Fort Worth to McAllen | Envoy Air | 78.7% | 80.1% | 1.78% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 4. DFW → MFEDallas-Fort Worth to McAllen | American Airlines | 62.8% | 65.0% | 3.42% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 11 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–11am409 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm242 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm300 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm189 flights78.0%
- 8pm–5am355 flights82.5%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 78.0%. 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 409 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
August is the worst month at 76.9% on time, 19 points below February, the best at 95.5%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 144 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.1%. 8 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 15,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 15,094 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.01%, against 1.81% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 461 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 85.5% on time across 1,495 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,495 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 HRL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.01% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,448 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to HRL questions
How often is DFW to HRL delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.5% of the 1,495 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to HRL compared with the rest of the country?
84.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to HRL?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 78.0%, 11 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 August delays on DFW to HRL?
August is the weakest month at 76.9% on time, compared with 95.5% in February. Across the year that is 19 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
- HRL to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on DFW to HRL84.8%
- Envoy Air on DFW to HRL84.5%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- HOU to HRL, a related route75.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record84.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to HRL and HRL 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.