Route reliability record

DFW→RDU

Dallas-Fort Worth to Raleigh

Flights: 2,281
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 1,061 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,281 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 79 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,210 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.85%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

American

68.2% on time across 2,012 flights

These figures cover 2,281 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 RDU

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to RDU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	210	85.4%	73 min	1.43%	A
Envoy Airthin sample	7	71.4%	20 min	0.00%	C+
PSA Airlinesthin sample	18	69.2%	140 min	27.78%	C−
American Airlines	2,012	68.2%	68 min	2.83%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	34	61.8%	71 min	0.00%	D+

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 33 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–8am397 flights85.5%
8am–11am251 flights83.6%
11am–2pm474 flights68.8%
2pm–5pm332 flights61.7%
5pm–8pm608 flights64.4%
8pm–5am219 flights52.7%

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.7% on time, against 85.5% 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 608 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 31 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.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 53.1% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 84.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 215 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 73.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.3%. 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 53% of the 46,000 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
53%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
5%

53% 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 46,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 45,625 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 85.5% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.85%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.7% 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 1,061 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 77.6% on time across 2,278 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 2,281 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.85% 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. 2,210 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

DFW to RDU questions

How often is DFW to RDU 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 30.3% of the 2,281 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 RDU compared with the rest of the country?

69.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 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 RDU?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.7%, 33 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 RDU?

July is the weakest month at 53.1% on time, compared with 84.5% in September. Across the year that is 31 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 RDU and RDU 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures