Route reliability record
DFW→PNS
Dallas-Fort Worth to Pensacola
- Flights
- 1,706
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 604 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,706 DFW to PNS flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 383 at 65.1% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to PNS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 72.5%, 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 1,644 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
65.1% on time across 383 flights
These figures cover 1,706 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to PNS
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 237 | 82.2% | 50 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 383 | 65.1% | 82 min | 5.74% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,086 | 65.0% | 77 min | 2.85% | C |
PSA Airlines cancels 5.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 Pensacola
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. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → PNSDallas-Fort Worth to Pensacola | American Airlines | 63.1% | 65.0% | 2.85% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → PNSDallas-Fort Worth to Pensacola | PSA Airlines | 61.4% | 65.1% | 5.74% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | — |
| 3. DFW → VPSDallas-Fort Worth to Valparaiso | American Airlines | 60.5% | 62.1% | 2.65% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 2501 13:10 |
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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am76 flights80.3%
- 8am–11am408 flights77.2%
- 11am–2pm475 flights65.1%
- 2pm–5pm264 flights62.5%
- 5pm–8pm250 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am233 flights61.1%
Scale runs 55% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.1% on time, against 80.3% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 475 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to PNS 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 PNS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 80.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.1%, a wide gap of 19.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am80.3%
- 8–11am77.2%
- 11am–2pm65.1%
- 2–5pm62.5%
- 5–8pm63.1%
- 8pm–5am61.1%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
December is the weak month at 52.4% on time, against 82.5% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 208 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 58.5%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 41,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 40,720 reported delay minutes.
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 80.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.17%, against 1.89% 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
13.1% 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 604 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 73.7% on time across 1,706 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,706 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 PNS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,644 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to PNS questions
How often is DFW to PNS 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 1,706 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to PNS?
PSA Airlines leads at 65.1% on time across 383 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 65.0%, a gap of half a point. 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 PNS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.1%, 19 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 December delays on DFW to PNS?
December is the weakest month at 52.4% on time, compared with 82.5% in September. Across the year that is 30 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
- PNS to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to PNS82.2%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to PNS65.1%
- American Airlines on DFW to PNS65.0%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to PNS, a related route82.1%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.2%
- PSA Airlines on-time record65.1%
- American Airlines on-time record65.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to PNS and PNS to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to PNS’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.