Guide
The US routes with the most cancellations
Aspen (ASE) to Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) cancelled 8.19% of its scheduled flights from July 2025 to June 2026, the highest of 2,978 US routes. 527 routes cancelled 3% or more.
A late flight costs you time. A cancelled one can cost you the trip. Yet cancellation rates get far less attention than on-time rates, partly because they are small numbers: a route that cancels 3% of its flights sounds reliable until you realise that means roughly one flight in thirty never leaves.
This guide ranks the 2,978 US routes with a page on this site by the share of scheduled flights cancelled from July 2025 to June 2026.
The 20 routes with the most cancellations
| Route | Flights | Cancelled | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASE → DFW | 1,185 | 8.19% | 65.4% |
| CLE → DCA | 1,609 | 7.77% | 65.6% |
| DCA → CLE | 1,608 | 7.40% | 67.1% |
| LGA → GSP | 934 | 7.39% | 76.8% |
| LGA → OKC | 810 | 7.16% | 71.8% |
| MYR → EWR | 1,006 | 7.06% | 79.0% |
| LGA → ORF | 1,382 | 6.87% | 76.4% |
| ASE → LAX | 1,257 | 6.84% | 73.0% |
| LGA → IAD | 980 | 6.73% | 75.4% |
| ILM → DCA | 881 | 6.70% | 68.0% |
| ILM → LGA | 1,025 | 6.63% | 77.8% |
| LGA → ILM | 1,025 | 6.63% | 75.1% |
| MKE → LGA | 810 | 6.54% | 82.6% |
| IAD → LGA | 980 | 6.53% | 73.8% |
| DCA → SDF | 1,031 | 6.50% | 75.1% |
| DCA → BGR | 1,110 | 6.49% | 69.2% |
| GSO → LGA | 1,809 | 6.47% | 77.2% |
| ASE → ORD | 1,071 | 6.44% | 62.1% |
| GSP → LGA | 934 | 6.42% | 76.3% |
| DCA → MHT | 1,108 | 6.41% | 68.5% |
Each route links to its full page, where the carrier table shows whether one airline is responsible for most of the cancellations, and the monthly figures show whether they were spread across the year or concentrated in a few bad weeks.
The route with the highest rate is Aspen (ASE) to Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) at 8.19%. Across all 2,978 routes, the median is 1.45%. 527 routes cancelled 3% or more of their flights, 95 cancelled 5% or more, and 988 kept cancellations under 1%.
Where they cluster
The airport that appears most often among the 50 most-cancelled routes, as either origin or destination, is New York (LGA), on 23 of them. Cancellations concentrate on routes that touch airports prone to one of a few problems:
- Winter storms. Northern airports cancel in clusters when snow or ice closes runways, and a single storm can account for a large share of a route's annual cancellations.
- Airspace congestion. At the most crowded airports, air traffic control programmes can force airlines to cancel flights to reduce the number of arrivals.
- Short regional routes. When an airline has to cut flights on a bad day, it often cancels short routes where passengers can be rebooked or driven, rather than long ones.
- Small outstations. A route to an airport with few flights and no spare aircraft has nothing to substitute when the aircraft does not arrive.
Why cancellations and on-time rates can disagree
The on-time rate on this site, like the DOT's own, counts only flights that operated. A cancelled flight is not late; it is left out.
That means a route can have a respectable on-time rate and a poor cancellation rate at the same time, especially when an airline responds to disruption by cancelling flights rather than running them very late. The table shows both columns for that reason. A route near the top of the cancellation list with a strong on-time rate is one where things either go well or do not happen at all.
The routes that almost never cancel
| Route | Flights | Cancelled | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEN → ONT | 2,671 | 0.15% | 73.4% |
| HOU → MSY | 2,277 | 0.18% | 83.4% |
| ONT → SMF | 2,109 | 0.19% | 85.7% |
| BOI → DEN | 3,035 | 0.20% | 80.9% |
| DEN → BOI | 3,039 | 0.20% | 76.3% |
| DEN → IAH | 4,673 | 0.21% | 78.2% |
| DEN → SAT | 3,030 | 0.23% | 76.5% |
| GEG → DEN | 2,063 | 0.24% | 83.8% |
| IAH → DEN | 4,673 | 0.24% | 81.2% |
| SMF → ONT | 2,111 | 0.24% | 84.7% |
| SEA → BOI | 3,972 | 0.25% | 85.8% |
| LAX → ABQ | 2,198 | 0.27% | 86.0% |
| SFO → IAH | 3,600 | 0.28% | 84.8% |
| LAS → SAT | 2,053 | 0.29% | 75.8% |
| IAH → MSY | 2,962 | 0.30% | 82.9% |
Among routes with at least 2,000 flights, Denver (DEN) to Ontario (ONT) had the lowest rate at 0.15%. Routes at this end of the table tend to connect airports with mild weather, carriers with plenty of spare aircraft at both ends, or both.
Protecting a trip on a high-cancellation route
If your route is near the top of the list, the goal is to leave room for a cancellation rather than to avoid a delay:
- Fly early in the day. A morning cancellation leaves the rest of the day to rebook. An evening one can mean an overnight stay.
- Avoid the last flight of the day. If it is cancelled, there is nothing after it.
- Keep connections on one ticket. When a cancelled first flight breaks a connection on the same booking, the airline rebooks both legs. On separate tickets, the second flight is your problem.
- Check the carrier table. If one carrier cancels far more than another on the same route, the choice of airline is the simplest fix.
- Look at the month. If the cancellations are concentrated in winter, a spring or autumn trip on the same route may carry much less risk.
The booking a trip that survives guide covers these choices in more detail, and delayed flight rights in the US explains what airlines owe you when a flight is cancelled.
A note on the figures
Cancellation rates here are shares of every scheduled flight, taken from the DOT on-time data. Routes are directional, so the two directions of a city pair can have different rates, usually because of which end suffers the weather. Only routes with at least 365 flights over the period have a page and appear in these tables.
Common questions
Is a 3% cancellation rate high? It is higher than most routes on the site. With the median route close to the figure shown near the top of this guide, a 3% route cancels several times as often as a typical one, roughly one flight in thirty.
Are cancellations spread evenly through the year? Rarely. On many routes most cancellations fall in a few bad weeks, often winter storms. The route pages' month-by-month figures show when they happened.
Does the airline decide to cancel, or is it the weather? Both play a part. The DOT file gives each cancellation a code for the carrier, weather, the national airspace system or security. This guide ranks the overall rate rather than splitting it by those codes, so a high figure here can reflect any mix of them.
Which is worse for a trip, a late flight or a cancelled one? Usually a cancellation, because it can mean waiting hours or a day for another seat. That is why a route with a good on-time rate but a high cancellation rate still deserves caution.