Route reliability record
DFW→RDU
Dallas-Fort Worth to Raleigh
- Flights
- 2,266
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,266 DFW to RDU flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to RDU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.2%, against 71.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,209 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
69.4% on time across 1,999 flights
These figures cover 2,266 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 224 | 86.4% | 75 min | 0.89% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 83.3% | 47 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 7 | 71.4% | 20 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 1,999 | 69.4% | 69 min | 2.25% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 69.2% | 140 min | 27.78% | C− |
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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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am393 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am319 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm420 flights71.1%
- 2pm–5pm314 flights64.5%
- 5pm–8pm601 flights66.8%
- 8pm–5am219 flights51.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 85.1% 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 601 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to RDU 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 RDU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 51.4%, a wide gap of 33.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.1%
- 8–11am82.5%
- 11am–2pm71.1%
- 2–5pm64.5%
- 5–8pm66.8%
- 8pm–5am51.4%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
June is the worst month at 56.8% on time, 28 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.3%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 44,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 44,262 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 85.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.5% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 2,263 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 2,266 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 RDU 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. September runs 84.5% on time and June 56.8%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,209 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 arrives 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 2,266 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
71.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 RDU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.4%, 34 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 June delays on DFW to RDU?
June is the weakest month at 56.8% on time, compared with 84.5% in September. Across the year that is 28 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
- RDU to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to RDU86.4%
- American Airlines on DFW to RDU69.4%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.0%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record86.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record83.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record71.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.
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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.