Route profile
DCA→DFW
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Washington to Dallas–Fort Worth, 1,192 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 24% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,255 flights. How this is calculated
DCA → DFW arrives on time 78.8% of the time; the return trip, DFW → DCA, arrives on time 74.5% of the time, a 4.3-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
DCA → DFW spends 35.5 minutes on the ground on a 1,192-mile trip: 20.6 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at DCA and 15.0 minutes from touchdown to gate at DFW.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
Every day of the week performs about the same on this route, steadier than 91% of 4,467 comparable routes.
80.5% on time on the best day (Tuesday) against 75.7% on the worst (Sunday).
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 4,467 in the comparison.
Why DCA → DFW flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
DCA → DFW cancelled 272 of 10,255 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 38. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 88.6% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 43 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 272 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.
241 cancellations, 88.6% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
28 cancellations, 10.3% 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, 1.1% 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.
272 coded cancellations were recorded on DCA → DFW; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
49 min late
against a median of 10 min early
Percentiles over 10,255 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DFW after arriving from DCA.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 34% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 21% | High risk |
| 60 min | 14% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 8.4% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.6% | 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 2.65% of the time and diverts 0.69% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 9,912 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 49 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,255 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
DCA → DFW flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 86.8% of the time, against 63.6% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 23.2 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 89.8% on time from 804 flights
- 6 AM: 87.6% on time from 1,134 flights
- 7 AM: 84.8% on time from 633 flights
- 8 AM: 82.8% on time from 542 flights
- 9 AM: 82.5% on time from 732 flights
- 10 AM: 86.1% on time from 1,133 flights
- 11 AM: 83.8% on time from 805 flights
- 12 PM: 79.7% on time from 185 flights
- 1 PM: 76.0% on time from 901 flights
- 2 PM: 80.1% on time from 303 flights
- 3 PM: 73.7% on time from 849 flights
- 4 PM: too few flights to score
- 5 PM: 63.9% on time from 1,061 flights
- 6 PM: 68.4% on time from 590 flights
- 7 PM: 58.1% on time from 515 flights
- 8 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why DCA → 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 DCA → DFW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on DCA → DFW, at 46.5%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 86.8% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 63.6%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is DFW, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from DFW, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 7.0 times the normal rate at DFW against 4.2 times at DCA. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: DCA 9.3% against 2.2%, DFW 10.4% against 1.5%. Flights that did leave DFW in bad weather arrived on time 56.4% of the time, against 74.4% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | DCA | DFW |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 9.3% | 10.4% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 2.2% | 1.5% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 63.5% | 56.4% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 78.3% | 74.4% |
| Departures in bad weather | 41,449 | 72,822 |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from DCA and DFW, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad.
Weather source and limits. In full: DCA, DFW, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
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 | 10,255 | 78.8% | 2.65% | -10 min | 8.5% |
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 4.8 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 77.9%
- Feb: 82.3%
- Mar: 80.0%
- Apr: 77.7%
- May: 70.4%
- Jun: 75.0%
- Jul: 72.5%
- Aug: 76.0%
- Sep: 85.5%
- Oct: 84.4%
- Nov: 83.4%
- Dec: 81.6%
May is historically the weakest month and September the strongest, a spread of 15.1 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 69.1% from 251 flights
- August 2023: 79.3% from 277 flights
- September 2023: 90.0% from 262 flights
- October 2023: 83.9% from 278 flights
- November 2023: 86.3% from 263 flights
- December 2023: 84.9% from 271 flights
- January 2024: 74.1% from 275 flights
- February 2024: 80.5% from 261 flights
- March 2024: 79.3% from 278 flights
- April 2024: 73.8% from 243 flights
- May 2024: 57.1% from 248 flights
- June 2024: 73.7% from 248 flights
- July 2024: 69.5% from 258 flights
- August 2024: 72.5% from 278 flights
- September 2024: 89.2% from 297 flights
- October 2024: 90.3% from 309 flights
- November 2024: 87.4% from 292 flights
- December 2024: 84.6% from 306 flights
- January 2025: 79.3% from 308 flights
- February 2025: 86.8% from 280 flights
- March 2025: 80.2% from 310 flights
- April 2025: 78.6% from 300 flights
- May 2025: 72.3% from 310 flights
- June 2025: 73.7% from 274 flights
- July 2025: 71.3% from 277 flights
- August 2025: 76.4% from 274 flights
- September 2025: 76.8% from 270 flights
- October 2025: 78.3% from 279 flights
- November 2025: 76.2% from 264 flights
- December 2025: 75.0% from 274 flights
- January 2026: 80.6% from 277 flights
- February 2026: 79.4% from 252 flights
- March 2026: 80.6% from 277 flights
- April 2026: 79.9% from 294 flights
- May 2026: 79.3% from 300 flights
- June 2026: 77.6% from 270 flights
- July 2026: 79.9% from 270 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 78.4% against 80.6% in the 12 months before — declining by 2.2 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,255 DCA → 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