Route reliability record
DFW→LAX
Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 56,702
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 1,232 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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, about a point worse than the national rate of 75.9%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 56,702 flights, with a median arrival 1 minutes late.
The US average over the same twelve months is 75.9%, 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
74.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 55,847 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 2.23%
Best carrier
United
74.6% on time across 56,702 flights
These figures cover 57,000 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to LAX
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 56,702 | 74.6% | 52 min | 1.27% | C |
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 14 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–8am8,789 flights81.1%
- 8am–11am11,624 flights77.6%
- 11am–2pm10,490 flights74.6%
- 2pm–5pm9,923 flights71.1%
- 5pm–8pm10,206 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am5,670 flights80.1%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.1% of the time, against 67.6% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 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 67.1% on time, 12 points below September, the best at 79.1%. 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.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 2 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 657,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 657,000 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.
40% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 264,000 minutes out of 657,000, against a national NAS share of 30%.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 2.23%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.6% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,232 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.1% on time across 72,683 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.
56,702 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 79.1% on time and July 67.1%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else.
Common questions
DFW to LAX questions
How often is DFW to LAX delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.4% of the 56,702 flights in this analysis, against 24.1% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is DFW to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
74.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 75.9%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.6%, 14 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 LAX?
July is the weakest month at 67.1% on time, compared with 79.1% in September. Across the year that is 12 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
- LAX to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record74.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 11.3 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to LAX and LAX to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.