Route reliability record
DFW→TUS
Dallas-Fort Worth to Tucson
- Flights
- 2,190
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 813 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,190 DFW to TUS flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to TUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.3%, against 69.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 79 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,120 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
68.9% on time across 2,116 flights
These figures cover 2,190 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 TUS
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 | 32 | 84.4% | 36 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 80.5% | 29 min | 2.38% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,116 | 68.9% | 73 min | 2.93% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to TUS
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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am40 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am629 flights80.8%
- 11am–2pm216 flights71.8%
- 2pm–5pm418 flights69.8%
- 5pm–8pm423 flights61.6%
- 8pm–5am464 flights57.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 87.5% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 629 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to TUS 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 TUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.7%, a wide gap of 29.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.5%
- 8–11am80.8%
- 11am–2pm71.8%
- 2–5pm69.8%
- 5–8pm61.6%
- 8pm–5am57.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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.
July is the worst month at 57.0% on time, 23 points below November, 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. November was the busiest month here, with 225 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 47,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 46,762 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 18,000 of the 47,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.88%, 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
11.4% 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 813 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 81.2% on time across 2,189 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 2,190 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 TUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.88% 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. 2,120 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to TUS questions
How often is DFW to TUS 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 30.6% of the 2,190 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 TUS compared with the rest of the country?
69.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 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 TUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.7%, 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 July delays on DFW to TUS?
July is the weakest month at 57.0% on time, compared with 79.5% in November. 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
- TUS to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- PHX to TUS, a related route81.0%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record80.5%
- American Airlines on-time record68.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to TUS and TUS 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.