Route reliability record
DFW→HRL
Dallas-Fort Worth to Harlingen
- Flights
- 1,480
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 461 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,480 DFW to HRL flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to HRL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.0%, against 85.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,437 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
86.2% on time across 1,269 flights
These figures cover 1,480 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,269 | 86.2% | 57 min | 2.21% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 211 | 80.3% | 131 min | 6.16% | B− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 → HRLDallas-Fort Worth to Harlingen | Envoy Air | 84.3% | 86.2% | 2.21% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → BRODallas-Fort Worth to Brownsville | Envoy Air | 83.9% | 85.9% | 2.36% | 8am–11am, Thu (route) | — |
| 3. DFW → MFEDallas-Fort Worth to McAllen | Envoy Air | 82.4% | 83.5% | 1.36% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 4. DFW → MFEDallas-Fort Worth to McAllen | American Airlines | 61.4% | 63.4% | 3.09% | 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,480 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am409 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm235 flights88.2%
- 2pm–5pm299 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm195 flights81.4%
- 8pm–5am342 flights83.0%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 81.4% for the evening window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 409 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to HRL 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 HRL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 89.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 81.4%, a real gap of 8.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am89.8%
- 11am–2pm88.2%
- 2–5pm82.4%
- 5–8pm81.4%
- 8pm–5am83.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 77.9% on time, 18 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 91.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 14,782 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.77%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 86.8% on time across 1,480 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 1,480 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 95.5% on time and June 77.9%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,437 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 seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.6% of the 1,480 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 HRL compared with the rest of the country?
85.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to HRL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 81.4%, 8 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 HRL?
June is the weakest month at 77.9% on time, compared with 95.5% in February. Across the year that is 18 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
- Envoy Air on DFW to HRL86.2%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to HRL80.3%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- HOU to HRL, a related route75.9%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.2%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.