Route reliability record
DFW→SFO
Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco
- Flights
- 4,264
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,464 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route draws a D. Roughly 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 4,264 DFW to SFO flights, of which United Airlines flew 914 at 70.2% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to SFO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 70.8%, against 60.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 165 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,166 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.18%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
70.2% on time across 914 flights
These figures cover 4,264 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 SFO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 70.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 58.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,096 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 85.7% | 29 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 914 | 70.2% | 76 min | 0.66% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 3,096 | 58.2% | 67 min | 2.55% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 219 | 53.6% | 58 min | 3.65% | F− |
The spread between United and American is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to SFO
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → SJCDallas-Fort Worth to San Jose | American Airlines | 71.8% | 73.1% | 1.74% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → SFODallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco | United Airlines | 69.7% | 70.2% | 0.66% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. DFW → SFODallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco | American Airlines | 56.7% | 58.2% | 2.55% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1949 07:10 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 39 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am707 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am411 flights65.8%
- 11am–2pm843 flights60.4%
- 2pm–5pm505 flights56.6%
- 5pm–8pm814 flights54.4%
- 8pm–5am984 flights47.8%
Scale runs 40% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.8% on time, against 86.7% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 984 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to SFO 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 SFO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 47.8%, a wide gap of 38.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.7%
- 8–11am65.8%
- 11am–2pm60.4%
- 2–5pm56.6%
- 5–8pm54.4%
- 8pm–5am47.8%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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 36.9% on time, 42 points below March, the best at 79.3%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 424 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.6%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 111,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 111,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 110,838 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 86.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.18% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
14.5% 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 1,464 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 73.1% on time across 4,262 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,264 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 SFO 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. March runs 79.3% on time and June 36.9%, a swing of 42 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 4,166 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SFO questions
How often is DFW to SFO 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 39.2% of the 4,264 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SFO?
United Airlines leads at 70.2% on time across 914 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 58.2%, a gap of 12 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to SFO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 47.8%, 39 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 SFO?
June is the weakest month at 36.9% on time, compared with 79.3% in March. Across the year that is 42 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
- SFO to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DFW to SFO70.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to SFO58.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to SFO53.6%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.7%
- United Airlines on-time record70.2%
- American Airlines on-time record58.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. DFW to SFO and SFO 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.