Route reliability record
DFW→ONT
Dallas-Fort Worth to Ontario
- Flights
- 2,274
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,188 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,274 DFW to ONT flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to ONT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.9%, against 71.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,221 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.24%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
69.7% on time across 1,940 flights
These figures cover 2,274 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 ONT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 334 | 83.3% | 58 min | 1.20% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,940 | 69.7% | 66 min | 2.42% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to ONT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Ontario
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 87.8% | 89.2% | 1.59% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 439 06:15 |
| 2. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Spirit Airlines | 78.5% | 81.5% | 3.67% | 8pm–5am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | Frontier Airlines | 78.4% | 79.2% | 0.98% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 4. DFW → SNADallas-Fort Worth to Santa Ana | American Airlines | 77.4% | 79.3% | 2.42% | 5am–8am, Fri (route) | — |
| 5. DFW → LAXDallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles | American Airlines | 68.6% | 70.2% | 2.25% | 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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am110 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am584 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm427 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm151 flights74.1%
- 5pm–8pm429 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am573 flights56.3%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.3% on time, against 90.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 584 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to ONT 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 ONT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.3%, a wide gap of 34.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.7%
- 8–11am81.7%
- 11am–2pm78.9%
- 2–5pm74.1%
- 5–8pm65.4%
- 8pm–5am56.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 61.2% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 87.2%. 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 214 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.4%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 41,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 41,146 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.24% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.5% 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 1,188 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 80.8% on time across 2,274 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,274 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 ONT 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 87.2% on time and June 61.2%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,221 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ONT questions
How often is DFW to ONT delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.3% of the 2,274 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to ONT compared with the rest of the country?
71.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 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 ONT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.3%, 34 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 ONT?
June is the weakest month at 61.2% on time, compared with 87.2% in February. Across the year that is 26 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
- ONT to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Ontario International (ONT) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to ONT83.3%
- American Airlines on DFW to ONT69.7%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- PHX to ONT, a related route76.8%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record69.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DFW to ONT and ONT 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.