Route reliability record
DFW→VPS
Dallas-Fort Worth to Valparaiso
- Flights
- 1,353
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 641 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,353 DFW to VPS flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DFW to VPS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.5%, against 67.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 99 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,302 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
61.8% on time across 1,029 flights
These figures cover 1,353 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 VPS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 159 | 87.3% | 65 min | 5.03% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 165 | 85.2% | 49 min | 1.21% | A |
| American Airlines | 1,029 | 61.8% | 77 min | 3.60% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to VPS
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Valparaiso
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → ECPDallas-Fort Worth to Panama City | Envoy Air | 78.0% | 79.4% | 1.75% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. DFW → ECPDallas-Fort Worth to Panama City | PSA Airlines | 70.8% | 74.8% | 5.30% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 3. DFW → PNSDallas-Fort Worth to Pensacola | American Airlines | 62.3% | 64.4% | 3.28% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. DFW → VPSDallas-Fort Worth to Valparaiso | American Airlines | 59.6% | 61.8% | 3.60% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 2501 12:30 |
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 28 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–8am20 flights—
- 8am–11am370 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm364 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm226 flights53.6%
- 5pm–8pm161 flights77.3%
- 8pm–5am212 flights54.7%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.5% of the time, against 53.6% for the afternoon window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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 47.2% on time, 33 points below October, the best at 80.4%. 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 138 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 58.8%. 15 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 50% of the 32,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
50% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 31,683 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 81.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 13.6% 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 641 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 72.7% on time across 1,353 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,353 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 VPS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,302 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to VPS questions
How often is DFW to VPS 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 32.3% of the 1,353 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 VPS compared with the rest of the country?
67.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 VPS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 53.6%, 28 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 VPS?
June is the weakest month at 47.2% on time, compared with 80.4% in October. Across the year that is 33 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
- VPS to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on DFW to VPS87.3%
- Envoy Air on DFW to VPS85.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to VPS61.8%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ATL to VPS, a related route84.7%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record87.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.2%
- American Airlines on-time record61.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to VPS and VPS 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.