Carrier route record

DLDFW→LAX

Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles

Flights: 757
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on DFW to LAX earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 757 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 381 at 81.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DFW to LAX record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 119 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 744 completed flights

Avg delay

95 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.59%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

74.0%

Every carrier on DFW to LAX, 6,184 flights

These figures cover 757 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on DFW to LAX

Delta flew 757 of the 6,184 flights on DFW to LAX, about 12% of it. Its 89.2% on time is 15 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.2% to American at 70.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 81.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,536 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	757	89.2%	95 min	1.59%	A
Spirit Airlines	381	81.5%	72 min	3.67%	B−
Frontier Airlines	510	79.2%	78 min	0.98%	B+
American Airlines	4,536	70.2%	64 min	2.25%	C

Spirit Airlines cancels 3.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on DFW to LAX

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Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

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 757 flights.

5am–8am365 flights92.1%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm23 flights—
2pm–5pm324 flights86.9%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am45 flights82.2%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 82.2% for the overnight window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on DFW to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, June worst

June is the worst month at 78.3% on time, 18 points below March, the best at 96.6%. 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 84 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 87.0%, a spread of 5 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on DFW to LAX runs when it is late

Delta on DFW to LAX often beats the schedule: 247 of 744 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 80 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.

15+ min early247 flights33.2%
Within 15 min417 flights56.0%
15–29 min late21 flights2.8%
30–59 min late20 flights2.7%
1–2 hours late17 flights2.3%
2+ hours late22 flights3.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 744 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

12 of 75 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on DFW to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 9 June 2026, 9 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Delta on DFW to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
9 June 2026	9 hours 25 minutes	Carrier
11 May 2026	6 hours 33 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
11 July 2026	6 hours 23 minutes	Carrier
13 June 2026	5 hours 50 minutes	Carrier
26 January 2026	4 hours 33 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 50% of the 7,592 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
22%
Extreme weather
17%
National Airspace System
11%

Extreme weather accounts for 17% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,592 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,779 of the 7,592 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,235 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 85.4% on time across 757 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 757 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.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on DFW to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 757 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 89.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 744 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures