Route reliability record
RIC→DFW
Richmond to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,079
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,158 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,079 RIC to DFW flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly RIC to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 79.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.3%, against 70.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,040 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
69.9% on time across 1,017 flights
These figures cover 1,079 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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 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 | 62 | 85.0% | 32 min | 1.61% | A |
| American Airlines | 1,017 | 69.9% | 82 min | 2.75% | 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.
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights79.9%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm136 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights66.9%
- 5pm–8pm214 flights59.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.7% on time, against 79.9% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
August is the worst month at 55.4% on time, 34 points below February, the best at 89.4%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 63.8%. 13 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 48% of the 24,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 24,335 reported delay minutes.
48% 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 24,000 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 2.69%, 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. 11.1% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 69.2% on time across 1,079 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,079 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. 1,079 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 70.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,040 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to DFW questions
How often is RIC to DFW delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.2% of the 1,079 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is RIC to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
70.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 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 79.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.7%, 20 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 August delays on RIC to DFW?
August is the weakest month at 55.4% on time, compared with 89.4% in February. Across the year that is 34 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 route88.7%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- RIC to CLT, a related route83.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.0%
- American Airlines on-time record69.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.