Route reliability record
DFW→ORF
Dallas-Fort Worth to Norfolk
- Flights
- 968
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,212 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 968 DFW to ORF flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DFW to ORF: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.7%, against 64.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 132 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 939 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
63.9% on time across 935 flights
These figures cover 968 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 ORF
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 Airthin sample | 11 | 72.7% | 34 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 22 | 68.2% | 81 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 935 | 63.9% | 66 min | 2.67% | D |
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.
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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am14 flights—
- 8am–11am270 flights76.6%
- 11am–2pm110 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm212 flights56.0%
- 5pm–8pm362 flights53.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 82.1% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to ORF 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 ORF, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 82.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 53.6%, a wide gap of 28.5 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am76.6%
- 11am–2pm82.1%
- 2–5pm56.0%
- 5–8pm53.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 47 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 40.0% on time, 47 points below October, the best at 86.7%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.5%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 22,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 22,125 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,540 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.58%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
13.5% 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 1,212 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 73.9% on time across 968 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 968 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 968 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 64.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 939 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ORF questions
How often is DFW to ORF delayed?
About 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 35.9% of the 968 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to ORF compared with the rest of the country?
64.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 13 points against it. That is worth a D on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to ORF?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 82.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.6%, 28 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 ORF?
July is the weakest month at 40.0% on time, compared with 86.7% in October. Across the year that is 47 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
- ORF to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to ORF, a related route78.7%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record68.2%
- American Airlines on-time record63.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to ORF and ORF 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.