Route reliability record
ABI→DFW
Abilene to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,749
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 158 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,749 ABI to DFW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly ABI to DFW: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.5% of the time and Thursday flights 87.0%, against 82.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,705 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
82.5% on time across 1,749 flights
These figures cover 1,749 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ABI to DFW
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,749 | 82.5% | 71 min | 2.34% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ABI to DFW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am511 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am491 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm107 flights87.5%
- 2pm–5pm283 flights86.0%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 87.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 511 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 76.5% on time, 12 points below February, the best at 88.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.9%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 25%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 25% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 4.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,155 reported delay minutes.
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations sit at 2.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 158 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.7% on time across 1,749 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,749 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 88.6% on time and August 76.5%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,705 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ABI to DFW questions
How often is ABI to DFW delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.5% of the 1,749 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ABI to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
82.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ABI to DFW?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.8%, 17 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on ABI to DFW?
August is the weakest month at 76.5% on time, compared with 88.6% in February. Across the year that is 12 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ABI — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- LGA to DFW, a related route70.8%
- ATL to DFW, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ABI to DFW and DFW to ABI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.