Route reliability record
HOU→DAL
Houston to Dallas
- Flights
- 4,039
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 239 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 4,039 HOU to DAL flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly HOU to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.9%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,943 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.6% on time across 4,039 flights
These figures cover 4,039 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to DAL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 4,039 | 81.6% | 56 min | 2.10% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on HOU to DAL
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Dallas
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HOU → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 81.1% | 83.4% | 2.74% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. HOU → DALHouston to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 79.9% | 81.6% | 2.10% | 5am–8am, Tue | WN 1636 06:00 |
| 3. IAH → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 76.9% | 79.0% | 2.68% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 4. IAH → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | United Airlines | 75.7% | 76.8% | 1.42% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 1388 14:35 |
| 5. HOU → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | PSA Airlines | 74.0% | 77.9% | 5.01% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am621 flights95.1%
- 8am–11am718 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm673 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm766 flights77.1%
- 5pm–8pm709 flights73.1%
- 8pm–5am552 flights68.4%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.1% of the time, against 68.4% for the overnight window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 766 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HOU to DAL 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 HOU to DAL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 68.4%, a wide gap of 26.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.1%
- 8–11am91.3%
- 11am–2pm84.1%
- 2–5pm77.1%
- 5–8pm73.1%
- 8pm–5am68.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 68.0% on time, 24 points below January, the best at 92.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 364 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.9%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 40,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 40,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 39,912 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 95.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 239 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.8% on time across 4,044 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,039 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 DAL 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. January runs 92.4% on time and June 68.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,943 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to DAL questions
How often is HOU to DAL delayed?
Roughly 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 18.4% of the 4,039 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is HOU to DAL compared with the rest of the country?
81.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to DAL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.4%, 27 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 HOU to DAL?
June is the weakest month at 68.0% on time, compared with 92.4% in January. Across the year that is 24 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
- DAL to HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.2%
- ATL to DAL, a related route80.4%
- HOU to DEN, a related route77.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. HOU to DAL and DAL to HOU 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.