Route reliability record
ELP→DFW
El Paso to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,558
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 551 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,558 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 653 at 79.2% on time.
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
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,466 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
79.2% on time across 653 flights
These figures cover 2,558 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 ELP to DFW
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 653 | 79.2% | 95 min | 1.38% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,832 | 77.6% | 102 min | 3.77% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 34 | 75.8% | 103 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 39 | 73.0% | 92 min | 5.13% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 18 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am729 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am519 flights81.4%
- 11am–2pm439 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm576 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm290 flights69.4%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.4% of the time, against 68.1% for the afternoon window. That is 18 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 729 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,558 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 73.4%. March is the strongest month at 84.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 11 points. October was the busiest month here, with 235 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.8%. 8 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 48% of the 54,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
48% 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 54,000 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 54,474 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 86.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.13%, 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. 9.9% 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 551 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 67.7% on time across 2,558 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,558 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.13% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 2,466 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ELP to DFW questions
How often is ELP to DFW delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.1% of the 2,558 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ELP to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 79.2% on time across 653 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 77.6%, a gap of 2 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 ELP to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 68.1%, 18 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 November delays on ELP to DFW?
November is the weakest month at 73.4% on time, compared with 84.5% in March. Across the year that is 11 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 ELP — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record79.2%
- American Airlines on-time record77.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ELP to DFW and DFW to ELP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.