Route reliability record
LFT→DFW
Lafayette to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,670
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 351 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% 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 C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,670 LFT to DFW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 568 at 82.6% on time.
Best time to fly LFT to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.5%, against 73.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,603 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
82.6% on time across 568 flights
These figures cover 1,670 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 LFT to DFW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 82.6% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 68.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,036 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 568 | 82.6% | 77 min | 2.64% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 66 | 76.6% | 113 min | 1.52% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 1,036 | 68.3% | 105 min | 4.54% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.5% 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 Lafayette 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. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LFT → DFWLafayette to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 80.4% | 82.6% | 2.64% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. BTR → DFWBaton Rouge to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 79.7% | 81.1% | 1.71% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. BTR → DFWBaton Rouge to Dallas-Fort Worth | PSA Airlines | 72.9% | 76.3% | 4.45% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 4. LFT → DFWLafayette to Dallas-Fort Worth | PSA Airlines | 65.2% | 68.3% | 4.54% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am358 flights87.3%
- 8am–11am316 flights76.2%
- 11am–2pm176 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm349 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm426 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am45 flights60.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.0% on time, against 87.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 426 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
December is the weak month at 65.1% on time, against 83.9% in January. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 154 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.1%. 12 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 57% of the 42,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,010 reported delay minutes.
57% 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 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 3.77%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 12.3% 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 351 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 74.5% on time across 1,670 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 1,670 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 3.77% 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. 1,603 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LFT to DFW questions
How often is LFT 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 26.5% of the 1,670 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 LFT to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 82.6% on time across 568 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 68.3%, a gap of 14 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 LFT to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.0%, 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 December delays on LFT to DFW?
December is the weakest month at 65.1% on time, compared with 83.9% in January. Across the year that is 19 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 LFT — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on LFT to DFW82.6%
- PSA Airlines on LFT to DFW68.3%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- LGA to DFW, a related route70.8%
- ATL to DFW, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record68.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LFT to DFW and DFW to LFT 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.