Route profile
CLE→DFW
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Cleveland to Dallas–Fort Worth, 1,021 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 19% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 5,317 flights. How this is calculated
CLE → DFW arrives on time 75.3% of the time; the return trip, DFW → CLE, arrives on time 69.6% of the time, a 5.6-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
CLE → DFW spends 31.4 minutes on the ground on a 1,021-mile trip: 15.5 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at CLE and 15.9 minutes from touchdown to gate at DFW.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why CLE → DFW flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
CLE → DFW cancelled 118 of 5,317 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 45. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 85.6% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 53 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 118 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
101 cancellations, 85.6% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
14 cancellations, 11.9% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
3 cancellations, 2.5% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
118 coded cancellations were recorded on CLE → DFW; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
53 min late
against a median of 6 min early
Percentiles over 5,317 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DFW after arriving from CLE.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 40% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 24% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 8.9% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.7% | Some risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 2.22% of the time and diverts 0.62% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 5,166 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 53 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 5,317 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
CLE → DFW flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 83.1% of the time, against 60.8% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 22.3 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 85.5% on time from 883 flights
- 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 83.6% on time from 694 flights
- 8 AM: 77.9% on time from 284 flights
- 9 AM: 79.9% on time from 239 flights
- 10 AM: too few flights to score
- 11 AM: 79.0% on time from 351 flights
- 12 PM: 77.6% on time from 217 flights
- 1 PM: 79.0% on time from 666 flights
- 2 PM: 73.6% on time from 282 flights
- 3 PM: 70.5% on time from 192 flights
- 4 PM: too few flights to score
- 5 PM: 59.8% on time from 762 flights
- 6 PM: 69.8% on time from 153 flights
- 7 PM: 56.9% on time from 337 flights
- 8 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why CLE → DFW runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for CLE → DFW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on CLE → DFW, at 44.0%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 83.1% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 60.8%.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 4,754 | 75.9% | 2.19% | -6 min | 8.6% |
| Frontier Airlines | 522 | 68.8% | 2.11% | 0 min | 12.4% |
American Airlines flew 90.1% of the 5,276 flights listed.
American Airlines arrived on time 7.1 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA2331 American Airlines | 11:58 AM | 1,004 | 80.2% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Saturday the least, a gap of 5.4 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 66.4%
- Feb: 73.2%
- Mar: 78.7%
- Apr: 71.4%
- May: 73.7%
- Jun: 69.4%
- Jul: 67.3%
- Aug: 77.0%
- Sep: 81.4%
- Oct: 82.7%
- Nov: 83.1%
- Dec: 81.4%
January is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 16.7 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 62.3% from 203 flights
- August 2023: 75.8% from 201 flights
- September 2023: 79.9% from 176 flights
- October 2023: 83.3% from 154 flights
- November 2023: 87.0% from 146 flights
- December 2023: 91.5% from 143 flights
- January 2024: 61.9% from 125 flights
- February 2024: too few flights to score (116)
- March 2024: 77.6% from 136 flights
- April 2024: 68.1% from 138 flights
- May 2024: 66.9% from 141 flights
- June 2024: 73.9% from 160 flights
- July 2024: 65.5% from 168 flights
- August 2024: 81.8% from 139 flights
- September 2024: 82.4% from 142 flights
- October 2024: 81.9% from 144 flights
- November 2024: 80.0% from 134 flights
- December 2024: 73.6% from 134 flights
- January 2025: 68.8% from 133 flights
- February 2025: 64.2% from 125 flights
- March 2025: 85.5% from 134 flights
- April 2025: 70.2% from 129 flights
- May 2025: 74.8% from 140 flights
- June 2025: 70.0% from 165 flights
- July 2025: 66.9% from 170 flights
- August 2025: 74.1% from 147 flights
- September 2025: 82.1% from 144 flights
- October 2025: 82.7% from 135 flights
- November 2025: 81.7% from 130 flights
- December 2025: 78.5% from 146 flights
- January 2026: too few flights to score (106)
- February 2026: too few flights to score (102)
- March 2026: 73.4% from 143 flights
- April 2026: 75.8% from 135 flights
- May 2026: 78.6% from 147 flights
- June 2026: 63.6% from 148 flights
- July 2026: 77.2% from 138 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 75.8% against 74.9% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 5,317 CLE → DFW flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed