Route reliability record
IAH→DFW
Houston to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 5,800
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 224 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 5,800 IAH to DFW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 710 at 79.0% on time.
Best time to fly IAH to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.1%, against 76.4% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.0% on time across 710 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,655 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.34%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
79.0% on time across 710 flights
These figures cover 5,800 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to DFW
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 82.4% | 263 min | 2.86% | B |
| Envoy Air | 710 | 79.0% | 106 min | 2.68% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 83 | 76.9% | 66 min | 6.02% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,459 | 76.8% | 72 min | 1.42% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,513 | 75.2% | 120 min | 3.02% | B− |
American Airlines cancels 3.0% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on IAH 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.
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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 → 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 25 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,319 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am958 flights79.9%
- 11am–2pm726 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm1,201 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm933 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am663 flights74.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 87.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 1,319 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter IAH to DFW 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 IAH to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 62.1%, a wide gap of 25.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.1%
- 8–11am79.9%
- 11am–2pm79.1%
- 2–5pm72.6%
- 5–8pm62.1%
- 8pm–5am74.0%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 64.6% on time, 21 points below February, the best at 85.4%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 524 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.9%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 131,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 131,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 130,862 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 87.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.34% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 224 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 70.7% on time across 5,800 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 5,800 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. February runs 85.4% on time and June 64.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 5,655 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to DFW questions
How often is IAH to DFW delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.6% of the 5,800 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 79.0% on time across 710 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 75.2%, a gap of 4 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 IAH to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.1%, 25 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 IAH to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 64.6% on time, compared with 85.4% in February. Across the year that is 21 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 IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on IAH to DFW79.0%
- United Airlines on IAH to DFW76.8%
- American Airlines on IAH to DFW75.2%
- IAH to ORD, a related route75.1%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- IAH to LAX, a related route84.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.9%
- 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. IAH to DFW and DFW to IAH 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.