Route reliability record
DFW→RSW
Dallas-Fort Worth to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 1,370
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 1,370 DFW to RSW flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DFW to RSW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.7%, against 65.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 121 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,325 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
65.5% on time across 1,368 flights
These figures cover 1,370 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 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 | 1,368 | 65.5% | 72 min | 3.00% | 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.
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 21 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–8am81 flights76.9%
- 8am–11am399 flights76.6%
- 11am–2pm200 flights69.1%
- 2pm–5pm236 flights55.5%
- 5pm–8pm418 flights57.4%
- 8pm–5am36 flights57.6%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 76.9% of the time, against 55.5% for the afternoon window. That is 21 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.
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.
July is the worst month at 52.0% on time, 28 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. July was the busiest month here, with 153 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 55.7%. 18 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 46% of the 33,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 32,672 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 12,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.99%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.0% 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 1,017 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. 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 75.5% on time across 1,372 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 1,370 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.99% 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. 1,325 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 34.5% of the 1,370 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 RSW compared with the rest of the country?
65.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 76.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 55.5%, 21 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 RSW?
July is the weakest month at 52.0% on time, compared with 80.0% in February. 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
- 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 route67.6%
- ORD to RSW, a related route76.1%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record65.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.