Route reliability record
DFW→PBI
Dallas-Fort Worth to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 1,146
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 1,146 DFW to PBI flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DFW to PBI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 74.0%, against 65.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 121 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,107 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
65.5% on time across 1,146 flights
These figures cover 1,146 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 | 1,146 | 65.5% | 66 min | 3.14% | C− |
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 | 70.2% | 73.5% | 4.43% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → FLLDallas-Fort Worth to Fort Lauderdale | American Airlines | 66.3% | 68.6% | 3.32% | 5am–8am, Thu | AA 1373 12:19 |
| 3. DFW → PBIDallas-Fort Worth to West Palm Beach | American Airlines | 63.4% | 65.5% | 3.14% | 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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am408 flights76.3%
- 11am–2pm202 flights63.5%
- 2pm–5pm221 flights55.5%
- 5pm–8pm280 flights61.9%
- 8pm–5am35 flights44.1%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.1% on time, against 76.3% for the 8am–11am 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 408 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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.
August is the worst month at 43.2% on time, 35 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 74.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.0%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 25,328 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 76.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.14%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.6% on time across 1,145 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,146 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 PBI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.14% 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. 1,107 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 34.5% of the 1,146 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to PBI compared with the rest of the country?
65.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 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 76.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 44.1%, 32 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 August delays on DFW to PBI?
August is the weakest month at 43.2% on time, compared with 77.9% in October. Across the year that is 35 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
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ATL to PBI, a related route75.7%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- American Airlines on-time record65.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.