Route reliability record
LIT→DFW
Little Rock to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,670
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 304 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,670 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,656 at 74.7% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.7% on time across 1,656 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,590 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
74.7% on time across 1,656 flights
These figures cover 2,670 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 LIT to DFW
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 | 92 | 75.9% | 78 min | 5.43% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,656 | 74.7% | 76 min | 2.36% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 403 | 70.4% | 99 min | 2.48% | C |
| American Airlines | 519 | 70.0% | 104 min | 3.28% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.3% 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 17 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am618 flights78.0%
- 8am–11am522 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm344 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm485 flights68.8%
- 5pm–8pm594 flights65.2%
- 8pm–5am107 flights67.6%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.8% of the time, against 65.2% for the evening window. That is 17 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 618 flights scheduled in it.
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.
July is the worst month at 60.8% on time, 24 points below January, the best at 84.6%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 255 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.8%. 12 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 60,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Extreme weather
- 25%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 26% 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 4.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 59,775 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 60,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 1 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 2.66%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 10.4% 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 304 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 75.8% on time across 2,669 flights, within 3 points 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 2,670 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.
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 84.6% on time and July 60.8%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,590 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIT to DFW questions
How often is LIT to DFW delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.8% of the 2,670 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 LIT to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 74.7% on time across 1,656 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 70.0%, a gap of 5 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 LIT to DFW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.2%, 17 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 July delays on LIT to DFW?
July is the weakest month at 60.8% on time, compared with 84.6% 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
- DFW to LIT — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on-time record75.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. LIT to DFW and DFW to LIT 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.