Route profile
PHL→DFW
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Philadelphia to Dallas–Fort Worth, 1,303 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 16% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,727 flights. How this is calculated
PHL → DFW arrives on time 76.4% of the time; the return trip, DFW → PHL, arrives on time 71.5% of the time, a 4.9-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
PHL → DFW spends 36.1 minutes on the ground on a 1,303-mile trip: 20.7 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at PHL and 15.4 minutes from touchdown to gate at DFW.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why PHL → DFW flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
PHL → DFW cancelled 275 of 10,727 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 39. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 80.0% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 49 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 275 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.
220 cancellations, 80.0% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
46 cancellations, 16.7% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
9 cancellations, 3.3% 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.
275 coded cancellations were recorded on PHL → DFW; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
55 min late
against a median of 8 min early
PHL → DFW has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 8 min early, but the worst tenth are 63 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 10,727 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DFW after arriving from PHL.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 38% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 23% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 9.3% | 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 2.56% 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 10,386 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 55 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,727 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
PHL → DFW flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 85.0% of the time, against 65.7% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 19.3 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 89.5% on time from 1,137 flights
- 6 AM: 85.1% on time from 1,032 flights
- 7 AM: 84.3% on time from 204 flights
- 8 AM: 80.8% on time from 1,215 flights
- 9 AM: too few flights to score
- 10 AM: 80.8% on time from 893 flights
- 11 AM: 75.6% on time from 438 flights
- 12 PM: 79.7% on time from 660 flights
- 1 PM: 78.3% on time from 602 flights
- 2 PM: 74.4% on time from 298 flights
- 3 PM: 69.2% on time from 902 flights
- 4 PM: 70.3% on time from 579 flights
- 5 PM: 64.8% on time from 562 flights
- 6 PM: 66.7% on time from 1,003 flights
- 7 PM: too few flights to score
- 8 PM: 65.4% on time from 481 flights
- 9 PM: 69.2% on time from 482 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why PHL → 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 PHL → DFW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on PHL → DFW, at 38.5%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 85.0% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 65.7%.
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 4.3 times at PHL. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: PHL 6.5% against 1.5%, 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 | PHL | DFW |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 6.5% | 10.4% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.5% | 1.5% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 64.3% | 56.4% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 78.2% | 74.4% |
| Departures in bad weather | 32,038 | 72,822 |
None of the 2 carriers on this route stood clearly apart from the other carriers at PHL in bad weather.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at PHL
All departures from PHL| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 14,281 | 6.4%about level | 6.8% |
| Frontier Airlines | 3,603 | 6.5%about level | 6.2% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from PHL and DFW, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from PHL on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: PHL (airlines), 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 | 9,697 | 77.8% | 2.56% | -8 min | 8.7% |
| Frontier Airlines | 883 | 63.3% | 2.49% | 0 min | 16.6% |
American Airlines flew 91.7% of the 10,580 flights listed.
American Airlines arrived on time 14.5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA1692 American Airlines | 8:35 AM | 601 | 79.7% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 9.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 73.4%
- Feb: 83.7%
- Mar: 84.0%
- Apr: 80.1%
- May: 69.9%
- Jun: 67.0%
- Jul: 65.4%
- Aug: 72.2%
- Sep: 81.3%
- Oct: 85.6%
- Nov: 82.7%
- Dec: 78.2%
July is historically the weakest month and October the strongest, a spread of 20.2 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 63.8% from 337 flights
- August 2023: 77.6% from 337 flights
- September 2023: 82.3% from 287 flights
- October 2023: 83.5% from 303 flights
- November 2023: 82.9% from 286 flights
- December 2023: 90.7% from 259 flights
- January 2024: 72.6% from 241 flights
- February 2024: 86.0% from 243 flights
- March 2024: 85.8% from 281 flights
- April 2024: 78.4% from 271 flights
- May 2024: 61.5% from 279 flights
- June 2024: 71.1% from 314 flights
- July 2024: 61.0% from 331 flights
- August 2024: 69.0% from 336 flights
- September 2024: 80.9% from 336 flights
- October 2024: 88.9% from 325 flights
- November 2024: 83.6% from 293 flights
- December 2024: 78.4% from 289 flights
- January 2025: 72.0% from 264 flights
- February 2025: 79.4% from 236 flights
- March 2025: 79.9% from 264 flights
- April 2025: 78.3% from 265 flights
- May 2025: 65.2% from 294 flights
- June 2025: 59.9% from 288 flights
- July 2025: 64.4% from 295 flights
- August 2025: 69.4% from 290 flights
- September 2025: 80.8% from 258 flights
- October 2025: 84.0% from 303 flights
- November 2025: 81.6% from 290 flights
- December 2025: 65.4% from 270 flights
- January 2026: 75.5% from 269 flights
- February 2026: 85.7% from 253 flights
- March 2026: 86.2% from 291 flights
- April 2026: 83.6% from 265 flights
- May 2026: 81.9% from 313 flights
- June 2026: 69.1% from 331 flights
- July 2026: 72.2% from 340 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 77.8% against 75.0% in the 12 months before — improving by 2.8 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,727 PHL → 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