Route reliability record
DFW→RSW
Dallas-Fort Worth to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 1,332
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,017 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 1,332 DFW to RSW flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DFW to RSW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.3%, 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 1,294 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.48%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
67.4% on time across 1,330 flights
These figures cover 1,332 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% 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 RSW
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 | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,330 | 67.4% | 71 min | 2.48% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to RSW
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.
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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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am116 flights74.3%
- 8am–11am363 flights80.2%
- 11am–2pm234 flights67.4%
- 2pm–5pm200 flights56.7%
- 5pm–8pm418 flights59.9%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 80.2% of the time, against 56.7% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 418 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to RSW 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 RSW, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 80.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 56.7%, a wide gap of 23.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am74.3%
- 8–11am80.2%
- 11am–2pm67.4%
- 2–5pm56.7%
- 5–8pm59.9%
- 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 23 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 57.4% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 80.0%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.3%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 30,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 29,928 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 10,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.9% 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 1,017 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 77.5% on time across 1,333 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,332 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 RSW 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. February runs 80.0% on time and June 57.4%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,294 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to RSW questions
How often is DFW to RSW 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 1,332 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 RSW compared with the rest of the country?
67.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 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 RSW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 80.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 56.7%, 24 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 RSW?
June is the weakest month at 57.4% on time, compared with 80.0% in February. Across the year that is 23 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
- RSW to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to RSW, a related route75.6%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record67.4%
- 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 RSW and RSW 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.