Dallas Fort Worth International Airport leads another airport stress ranking, this time in a Rightway Parking analysis published on October 11 that combines flight disruptions with the drive to the terminal.
DFW ranked first among 55 airports as the most stressful, ahead of Chicago O’Hare and Ronald Reagan Washington National. Its analysis uses 2025 flight data and compares delay rates with 2021.
The company lists a 27.86% delay rate and a 2.76% cancellation rate for DFW. Salt Lake City finished at the opposite end of the ranking as the least stressful airport.
The result follows a separate MarketWatch Guides study that also put DFW at the bottom for stress-free travel, as The Dallas Express reported in July 2025.
That earlier analysis ranked 30 airports and included airfare, security waits, and diverted flights alongside delays and cancellations. Minneapolis-St. Paul took its top spot for stress-free travel, MarketWatch Guides found.
The different airport pools and scoring systems limit direct comparisons between the two rankings. Neither result establishes that DFW’s overall performance worsened between the reports.
Rightway combines five equally weighted measures: delays, cancellations, changes in delay rates, driving distance, and driving time. It cites Bureau of Transportation Statistics data and Google Maps estimates. The methodology describes a composite score rather than a passenger survey.
Flight disruption data also cover more than airport management. Domestic airline performance statistics distinguish carrier, weather, national aviation system, security, and late-arriving aircraft delays, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics explains.
The federal agency tracks domestic flights operated by large carriers. Its categories help distinguish the sources of disruption instead of assigning every delay to an airport.
