Route profile
HOU→DFW
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Houston to Dallas–Fort Worth, 247 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 10% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 6,759 flights. How this is calculated
HOU → DFW arrives on time 77.5% of the time; the return trip, DFW → HOU, arrives on time 77.7% of the time.
HOU → DFW spends 31.1 minutes on the ground on a 247-mile trip: 17.0 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at HOU and 14.0 minutes from touchdown to gate at DFW.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
This route has stayed remarkably steady year over year, a smaller swing than 95% of 5,368 comparable routes.
77.7% on time over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), against 78.0% in the 12 months before (2024-08 to 2025-07), virtually unchanged.
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 5,368 in the comparison.
Why HOU → DFW flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
HOU → DFW cancelled 251 of 6,759 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 27. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 76.5% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 35 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 251 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.
192 cancellations, 76.5% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
44 cancellations, 17.5% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
15 cancellations, 6.0% 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. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
251 coded cancellations were recorded on HOU → DFW; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
56 min late
against a median of 6 min early
HOU → DFW has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 6 min early, but the worst tenth are 62 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 6,759 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DFW after arriving from HOU.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 37% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 22% | High risk |
| 60 min | 15% | High risk |
| 90 min | 9.2% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 6.2% | 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 3.71% of the time and diverts 0.18% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 6,496 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 56 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 6,759 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
HOU → DFW flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 88.2% of the time, against 65.5% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 22.7 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 90.4% on time from 345 flights
- 6 AM: 87.8% on time from 927 flights
- 7 AM: too few flights to score
- 8 AM: 88.7% on time from 228 flights
- 9 AM: 84.9% on time from 464 flights
- 10 AM: 83.6% on time from 844 flights
- 11 AM: too few flights to score
- 12 PM: 80.6% on time from 689 flights
- 1 PM: too few flights to score
- 2 PM: 80.4% on time from 537 flights
- 3 PM: too few flights to score
- 4 PM: 65.8% on time from 899 flights
- 5 PM: too few flights to score
- 6 PM: 66.1% on time from 983 flights
- 7 PM: too few flights to score
- 8 PM: 68.6% on time from 784 flights
- 9 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why HOU → 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 HOU → DFW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on HOU → DFW, at 39.0%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 88.2% of the time and 3–6 PM departures 65.5%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 4,314 | 79.5% | 3.18% | -6 min | 7.6% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,536 | 73.1% | 3.71% | -5 min | 12.3% |
| PSA Airlines | 909 | 75.5% | 6.27% | -9 min | 13.2% |
Envoy Air flew 63.8% of the 6,759 flights listed. PSA Airlines cancelled 6.27% of its flights here against 3.18% for Envoy Air.
Envoy Air arrived on time 6.4 percentage points more often than SkyWest Airlines on this route.
Other ways to fly Houston to Dallas–Fort Worth
Airport pairs in the same two city markets, as the DOT defines them.
HOU → DAL is the most reliable pairing for this journey at 81.3% on time, against 73.2% for IAH → DFW.
Flying to DFW from the Houston area? Compare HOU, IAH for DFW, with the same test for what counts as a real difference.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Friday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 8.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 81.4%
- Feb: 80.7%
- Mar: 76.9%
- Apr: 72.7%
- May: 72.0%
- Jun: 69.0%
- Jul: 73.6%
- Aug: 82.4%
- Sep: 79.0%
- Oct: 78.6%
- Nov: 83.9%
- Dec: 80.8%
June is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 14.9 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 84.3% from 197 flights
- August 2023: 88.0% from 216 flights
- September 2023: 77.3% from 204 flights
- October 2023: 69.3% from 204 flights
- November 2023: 87.0% from 161 flights
- December 2023: 86.3% from 160 flights
- January 2024: 73.9% from 172 flights
- February 2024: 81.3% from 166 flights
- March 2024: 77.9% from 186 flights
- April 2024: 76.5% from 176 flights
- May 2024: 64.2% from 184 flights
- June 2024: 69.7% from 201 flights
- July 2024: 64.0% from 227 flights
- August 2024: 88.7% from 213 flights
- September 2024: 80.4% from 189 flights
- October 2024: 82.2% from 230 flights
- November 2024: 82.8% from 186 flights
- December 2024: 75.8% from 183 flights
- January 2025: 84.8% from 182 flights
- February 2025: 77.9% from 173 flights
- March 2025: 74.0% from 184 flights
- April 2025: 73.1% from 197 flights
- May 2025: 71.0% from 159 flights
- June 2025: 67.9% from 198 flights
- July 2025: 75.0% from 210 flights
- August 2025: 69.0% from 193 flights
- September 2025: 79.3% from 186 flights
- October 2025: 83.5% from 195 flights
- November 2025: 82.2% from 179 flights
- December 2025: 80.8% from 177 flights
- January 2026: 85.5% from 167 flights
- February 2026: 83.6% from 126 flights
- March 2026: 79.4% from 145 flights
- April 2026: 67.8% from 146 flights
- May 2026: 81.7% from 152 flights
- June 2026: 69.2% from 172 flights
- July 2026: 70.6% from 163 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 77.7% against 78.0% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 6,759 HOU → 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