Route reliability record
DRO→DFW
Durango to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,340
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 674 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,340 DRO to DFW flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly DRO to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.7% of the time and Thursday flights 88.7%, against 80.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,296 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.8% on time across 1,212 flights
These figures cover 1,340 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 DRO to DFW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,212 | 81.8% | 89 min | 2.89% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 66.4% | 136 min | 1.56% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DRO to DFW
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 23 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–8am343 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am310 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm325 flights77.8%
- 2pm–5pm209 flights74.5%
- 5pm–8pm153 flights65.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.7% of the time, against 65.7% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 343 flights scheduled in it.
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.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 65.2%. December is the strongest month at 88.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. June was the busiest month here, with 153 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.2%. 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. Carrier accounts for 55% of the 25,000 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.
- 55%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,694 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 13,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.76%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 674 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 77.3% on time across 1,342 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,340 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 DFW 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. December runs 88.5% on time and September 65.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of September before you think about anything else. 1,296 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DRO to DFW questions
How often is DRO to DFW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.7% of the 1,340 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DRO to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
80.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DRO to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.7%, 23 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 September delays on DRO to DFW?
September is the weakest month at 65.2% on time, compared with 88.5% in December. 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
- DFW to DRO — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DRO to DFW81.8%
- American Airlines on DRO to DFW66.4%
- DRO to DEN, a related route81.2%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- DRO to PHX, a related route78.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.8%
- American Airlines on-time record66.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. DRO to DFW and DFW to DRO 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.