Route reliability record
DFW→MIA
Dallas-Fort Worth to Miami
- Flights
- 4,804
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,121 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,804 DFW to MIA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to MIA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 72.8%, against 69.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,680 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
68.7% on time across 4,302 flights
These figures cover 4,804 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 MIA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 216 | 80.0% | 63 min | 2.78% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 286 | 69.3% | 108 min | 2.10% | C |
| American Airlines | 4,302 | 68.7% | 72 min | 2.37% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Miami
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → FLLDallas-Fort Worth to Fort Lauderdale | Spirit Airlines | 68.8% | 72.4% | 5.03% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → MIADallas-Fort Worth to Miami | American Airlines | 67.1% | 68.7% | 2.37% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → FLLDallas-Fort Worth to Fort Lauderdale | American Airlines | 66.5% | 68.3% | 2.61% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,116 flights81.0%
- 8am–11am949 flights78.3%
- 11am–2pm416 flights70.5%
- 2pm–5pm886 flights58.9%
- 5pm–8pm834 flights61.6%
- 8pm–5am603 flights57.7%
Scale runs 50% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 81.0% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 1,116 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to MIA 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 MIA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.7%, a wide gap of 23.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.0%
- 8–11am78.3%
- 11am–2pm70.5%
- 2–5pm58.9%
- 5–8pm61.6%
- 8pm–5am57.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 52.4% on time, 25 points below April, the best at 77.1%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 436 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.6%, a spread of 8 points.
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 106,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 106,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 106,006 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 39,000 of the 106,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.3% 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 1,121 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 75.1% on time across 4,804 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,804 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 MIA 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. April runs 77.1% on time and July 52.4%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,680 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to MIA questions
How often is DFW to MIA delayed?
Roughly 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 30.7% of the 4,804 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 MIA compared with the rest of the country?
69.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 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 MIA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.7%, 23 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 MIA?
July is the weakest month at 52.4% on time, compared with 77.1% in April. Across the year that is 25 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
- MIA to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to MIA80.0%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to MIA69.3%
- American Airlines on DFW to MIA68.7%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to MIA, a related route71.2%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record80.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record69.3%
- American Airlines on-time record68.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DFW to MIA and MIA 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.