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Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) Airport: Flight Status - Departures


  • The causes of flight departure delays at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) airport


    Did that flight arrive at Dallas Fort Worth airport yet? You called the airline... you checked on-line, perhaps even your cell phone received a flight status message... so why are they all different? Ok, this situation does happen, but it certainly isn't the norm. First, lets talk about the typical reasons that cause flights to arrive late.

    Weather This is probably the most obvious, and most common cause for delayed flight departures into DFW airport. There are three areas where weather affects flight schedules: at the origin airport, in-flight, and at the destination airport (in this case, Dallas Fort Worth airport).
    Whether at the origin airport or at DFW, weather can affect the scheduled flight departure in many ways, such as a passing thunderstorm or snow squall, or the need to de-ice the aircraft. These normally temporary issues have lingering affects on Dallas Fort Worth's flight departure times. When aircraft cannot depart on-time, later scheduled flights have to wait due to the backlog, as the spacing interval between takeoffs is fixed and cannot be compressed (imagine cars in traffic that have a required two car lengths between them). The net affect is that all of the flights scheduled to arrive from the airport with the weather problems will arrive to DFW late, as will many flights hours after the weather passed.

    Traffic Many factors can cause air traffic, and all impact flight departure times at DFW. Congestion isn't only a problem when you're driving to the airport. It affects aircraft as well and ultimately Dallas Fort Worth's scheduled flight departures. Weather delays cause disruptions in normal air traffic patterns. Flights normally scheduled to arrive at DFW on time might have to 'circle' around greater Dallas Fort Worth as congestion requires air traffic controllers to hold some flights in a prescribed pattern before they are cleared to land.

    So if you check on the flight status of a particular flight within 30 minutes of the scheduled departure time, you may find a discrepancy, as aircraft placed in holding patterns around Dallas Fort Worth airport may be reported as having arrived, even though the flight is still in the air.

    Go-Arounds A go-around occurs when an aircraft is just about to land at Dallas Fort Worth airport and the pilot decides it is not safe to land. So you will see (or feel) the plane suddenly increasing altitude, as if it were taking off again. Of course this affects the DFW departure time for that flight, as it could take up to 30 mins for the aircraft to return and land again.

    Mechanical Problems The bane of travelers and airlines alike, mechanical problems affect departure schedules too. If a scheduled flight has a mechanical problem while at the origin airport, the airlines and FAA will update the flight status so travelers know when a particular flight should land at Dallas Fort Worth airport. This is by far the greatest majority of cases - on-ground mechanical problems. However, if the flight experiences a significant mechanical problem while in the air, the flight might be re-routed to another airport. The FAA might not send updates fast enough to inform travelers and service providers (such as this site) of the change, and consequently the flight departure status could indicate all is well while the flight actually landed in another airport.

    Delayed Departures Sometimes a flight is intentionally delayed. The reasons could be weather-related; at the predicted departure time in Dallas Fort Worth , there may be bad weather forecasted. Or perhaps an incoming flight had many passengers on it who needed to connect with that flight - in some cases where the delay will not be too much, the airline may decide to delay the departure time to wait for connecting passengers. Sometimes crew members scheduled to fly on that flight might be delayed arriving to the airport, and hence the flight cannot leave without them. These issues can all contribute to your flight into DFW arriving late.

    Flight Departure Data: FAA departure time vs. Airline departure time As many frequent flyers know, there are times when the airport flight status monitors display departure and arrival times that may be different from the data displayed at the gate. Why is this? Well, the airports provide the flight departure & arrival data, which they get from the FAA (who monitors all flights in the US). On the other hand, the gate info is specific to an airline, and does not come from the FAA, but rather it comes from the airline's operations center. Hence, if for any reason (say a mechanical delay) has not been communicated with the FAA, the departure or arrival time displayed on the monitors throughout the airport might show different times for a flight that that shown at the gate. Frustrating? You bet. So the lesson here is make sure you double check with the gate, as probably they have the most up-to-date info.

  • How does iFly know the departure status?
    iFly processes flight departure data for thousands of US flights every minute. This flight status data comes directly into iFly's servers for display on the Dallas Fort Worth Flight Departures page, as well as all the other airports we cover. Unfortunately, the data from the FAA is not always accurate, hence there are times when the flight departure time or flight status at DFW airport will not be indicative of the actual departure time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

  • Why you can't see the flight status for flights crossing the Atlantic or pacific...
    The FAA tracks flights that are within US airspace. That data then gets passed to iFly's servers, so we can provide flight arrival and departure info. Flights that originate outside US airspace are therefore not trackable on iFly's Flight Tracker.


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