Route reliability record

DFW→PHX

Dallas-Fort Worth to Phoenix

Flights: 5,143
Period: June 2025 to May 2026
Distance: 868 mi
Carriers: 5

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 77.4%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 5,143 flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 531 at 76.0% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.4%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,010 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.41%

National rate is 1.80%

Best carrier

Frontier

76.0% on time across 531 flights

These figures cover 5,143 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 PHX

The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Envoy Airthin sample	10	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	21	81.0%	38 min	0.00%	B+
Frontier Airlines	531	76.0%	81 min	1.88%	B
American Airlines	4,580	70.7%	69 min	2.49%	C

No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 76.0%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 24 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am441 flights84.0%
8am–11am906 flights77.3%
11am–2pm680 flights77.5%
2pm–5pm1,107 flights73.0%
5pm–8pm1,013 flights65.2%
8pm–5am996 flights60.0%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.0% on time, against 84.0% 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.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 20 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, August worst

August is the worst month at 59.5% on time, 20 points below February, the best at 79.6%. 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.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.0%. 7 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 47% of the 100,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
30%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
10%
Security
0%

47% 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 100,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 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 84.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.41% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.

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. 10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 868 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 79.9% on time across 5,139 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 5,143 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.

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 79.6% on time and August 59.5%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else.

Common questions

DFW to PHX questions

How often is DFW to PHX delayed?

Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.7% of the 5,143 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on DFW to PHX?

Frontier Airlines leads at 76.0% on time across 531 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 70.7%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to PHX?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.0%, 24 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 PHX?

August is the weakest month at 59.5% on time, compared with 79.6% in February. Across the year that is 20 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. DFW to PHX and PHX to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures