Route reliability record
HOU→DFW
Houston to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,048
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 247 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,048 HOU to DFW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,061 at 80.9% on time.
Best time to fly HOU to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.9%, against 77.9% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.9% on time across 1,061 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,954 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
80.9% on time across 1,061 flights
These figures cover 2,048 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 HOU to DFW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 70.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 380 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,061 | 80.9% | 68 min | 2.73% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 607 | 77.2% | 103 min | 5.77% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 380 | 70.6% | 120 min | 6.84% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.8% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Dallas-Fort Worth
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 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HOU → DALHouston to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 79.1% | 80.9% | 2.19% | 5am–8am, Tue | WN 1636 06:00 |
| 2. HOU → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 78.7% | 80.9% | 2.73% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. IAH → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 75.7% | 78.1% | 3.10% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 4. IAH → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | United Airlines | 74.4% | 75.7% | 1.70% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 1388 14:35 |
| 5. HOU → DFWHouston to Dallas-Fort Worth | PSA Airlines | 72.7% | 77.2% | 5.77% | 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 23 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am354 flights88.6%
- 8am–11am553 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm238 flights75.1%
- 2pm–5pm408 flights71.3%
- 5pm–8pm283 flights65.6%
- 8pm–5am212 flights67.4%
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 88.6% of the time, against 65.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 553 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 April, when the on-time rate falls to 67.8%. January is the strongest month at 85.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. July was the busiest month here, with 210 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 39,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 39,332 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.
Cancellations run at 4.39%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 9.6% 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.
At 247 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 runs 76.9% on time across 2,048 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,048 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 delay figures matter less here than the 4.39% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,954 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to DFW questions
How often is HOU to DFW 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 22.1% of the 2,048 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 80.9% on time across 1,061 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 70.6%, a gap of 10 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 HOU to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.6%, 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 April delays on HOU to DFW?
April is the weakest month at 67.8% on time, compared with 85.5% in January. Across the year that is 18 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 HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on HOU to DFW80.9%
- PSA Airlines on HOU to DFW77.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on HOU to DFW70.6%
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record77.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. HOU to DFW and DFW 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.