Route reliability record
DFW→PIT
Dallas-Fort Worth to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 1,509
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,067 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,509 DFW to PIT flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to PIT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.8% of the time and Friday flights 76.3%, against 71.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 59 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,482 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
71.7% on time across 1,501 flights
These figures cover 1,509 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 PIT
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 | 1,501 | 71.7% | 68 min | 1.80% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 8 | 62.5% | 41 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to PIT
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.
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 36 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–8am329 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am156 flights78.1%
- 11am–2pm256 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm258 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm435 flights60.0%
- 8pm–5am75 flights51.4%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 87.8% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 435 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 61.1% on time, 22 points below October, the best at 83.1%. 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 152 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%. 10 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 29,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
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 29,000 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 split is drawn from 28,560 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,902 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.79% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 9.9% 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 1,067 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 79.4% on time across 1,509 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,509 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 PIT 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. October runs 83.1% on time and July 61.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,482 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to PIT questions
How often is DFW to PIT 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 1,509 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to PIT compared with the rest of the country?
71.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 PIT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.4%, 36 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 PIT?
July is the weakest month at 61.1% on time, compared with 83.1% in October. Across the year that is 22 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
- PIT to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ORD to PIT, a related route74.9%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- American Airlines on-time record71.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record62.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DFW to PIT and PIT 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.