Route reliability record
RIC→DFW
Richmond to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,071
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,158 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,071 RIC to DFW flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly RIC to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.7%, against 74.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,041 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.15%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
73.4% on time across 993 flights
These figures cover 1,071 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 RIC to DFW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 78 | 82.9% | 36 min | 1.28% | B |
| American Airlines | 993 | 73.4% | 98 min | 2.22% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on RIC 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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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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights81.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm131 flights76.4%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm211 flights64.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.7% on time, against 81.7% 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RIC 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 RIC to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.7%, a wide gap of 17.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.7%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm76.4%
- 2–5pm70.9%
- 5–8pm64.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 60.0% on time, against 89.4% in February. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 65.2%, a spread of 15 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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,608 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.15% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.65%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.3% 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.
The 1,158 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.8% on time across 1,071 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,071 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,071 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 74.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,041 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to DFW questions
How often is RIC 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 25.9% of the 1,071 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RIC to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
74.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RIC to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.7%, 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 December delays on RIC to DFW?
December is the weakest month at 60.0% on time, compared with 89.4% in February. Across the year that is 29 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- RIC to ATL, a related route88.5%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- RIC to CLT, a related route82.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.9%
- American Airlines on-time record73.4%
- 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. RIC to DFW and DFW to RIC 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.