Route reliability record
DFW→PBI
Dallas-Fort Worth to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 1,069
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,102 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a C. 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 1,069 DFW to PBI flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DFW to PBI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 75.0%, against 67.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,036 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
67.5% on time across 1,069 flights
These figures cover 1,069 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 PBI
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,069 | 67.5% | 63 min | 2.81% | C |
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to West Palm Beach
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 → FLLDallas-Fort Worth to Fort Lauderdale | American Airlines | 66.5% | 68.3% | 2.61% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. DFW → PBIDallas-Fort Worth to West Palm Beach | American Airlines | 65.6% | 67.5% | 2.81% | 8am–11am, 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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am394 flights77.4%
- 11am–2pm213 flights61.2%
- 2pm–5pm160 flights62.0%
- 5pm–8pm302 flights61.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 61.2% on time against 77.4% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 394 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to PBI 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 PBI, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 77.4% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 61.2%, a wide gap of 16.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am77.4%
- 11am–2pm61.2%
- 2–5pm62.0%
- 5–8pm61.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 50.0% on time, 28 points below October, the best at 77.9%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.9%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 21,150 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 77.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.81%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
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 1,102 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 73.0% on time across 1,068 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,069 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 PBI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,036 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to PBI questions
How often is DFW to PBI 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 32.5% of the 1,069 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to PBI compared with the rest of the country?
67.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 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 PBI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 77.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 61.2%, 16 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 PBI?
June is the weakest month at 50.0% on time, compared with 77.9% in October. Across the year that is 28 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
- PBI to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to PBI, a related route75.8%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- American Airlines on-time record67.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to PBI and PBI 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.