Route reliability record
DFW→TPA
Dallas-Fort Worth to Tampa
- Flights
- 2,917
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 929 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,917 DFW to TPA flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DFW to TPA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.0%, against 67.6% 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 97 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,823 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.91%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
65.9% on time across 2,608 flights
These figures cover 2,917 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 TPA
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 | 291 | 84.5% | 64 min | 2.75% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,608 | 65.9% | 68 min | 2.91% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 41.2% | 56 min | 5.56% | F− |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Tampa
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 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAL → TPADallas to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 69.9% | 70.6% | 0.94% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → TPADallas-Fort Worth to Tampa | American Airlines | 64.0% | 65.9% | 2.91% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am418 flights86.3%
- 8am–11am489 flights74.8%
- 11am–2pm619 flights67.7%
- 2pm–5pm493 flights58.2%
- 5pm–8pm656 flights61.5%
- 8pm–5am242 flights55.7%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 86.3% 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 656 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to TPA 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 TPA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.7%, a wide gap of 30.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.3%
- 8–11am74.8%
- 11am–2pm67.7%
- 2–5pm58.2%
- 5–8pm61.5%
- 8pm–5am55.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 50.2% on time, 29 points below February, the best at 79.5%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 272 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 61,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 61,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 61,385 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 86.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.91%, against 1.89% 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
12.2% 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 929 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 75.7% on time across 2,917 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 2,917 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 TPA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 2,823 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to TPA questions
How often is DFW to TPA 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 32.4% of the 2,917 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
67.6% 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 TPA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.7%, 31 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 TPA?
June is the weakest month at 50.2% on time, compared with 79.5% in February. Across the year that is 29 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
- TPA to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to TPA84.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to TPA65.9%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.0%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record84.5%
- American Airlines on-time record65.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record41.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to TPA and TPA 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.