Route reliability record
DFW→RIC
Dallas-Fort Worth to Richmond
- Flights
- 1,071
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,158 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,071 DFW to RIC flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to RIC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 74.3%, against 70.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 65 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,045 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.05%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
68.8% on time across 993 flights
These figures cover 1,071 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 RIC
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 78 | 96.1% | 27 min | 1.28% | A |
| American Airlines | 993 | 68.8% | 74 min | 2.11% | 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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am120 flights88.1%
- 8am–11am249 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm127 flights79.7%
- 2pm–5pm211 flights65.7%
- 5pm–8pm364 flights58.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.5% on time, against 88.1% 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to RIC 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 RIC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.5%, a wide gap of 29.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.1%
- 8–11am80.0%
- 11am–2pm79.7%
- 2–5pm65.7%
- 5–8pm58.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
June is the worst month at 59.3% on time, 22 points below November, the best at 81.2%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 66.9%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 22,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 22,350 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 88.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.1% 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 1,158 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 74.1% on time across 1,071 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,071 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in RIC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,071 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 70.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,045 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to RIC questions
How often is DFW to RIC 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 29.2% of the 1,071 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 RIC compared with the rest of the country?
70.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 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 RIC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.5%, 30 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 RIC?
June is the weakest month at 59.3% on time, compared with 81.2% in November. 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
- RIC to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to RIC, a related route81.6%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record96.1%
- American Airlines on-time record68.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to RIC and RIC 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.