Route reliability record
ASE→DFW
Aspen to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,185
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 701 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 8.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,185 ASE to DFW flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly ASE to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.9%, against 65.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 122 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,078 completed flights
Avg delay
114 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.4% on time across 1,185 flights
These figures cover 1,185 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ASE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,185 | 65.4% | 114 min | 8.19% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ASE 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Aspen to Dallas-Fort Worth
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EGE → DFWEagle to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 64.8% | 66.6% | 2.75% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. ASE → DFWAspen to Dallas-Fort Worth | SkyWest Airlines | 60.0% | 65.4% | 8.19% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 6407 12:39 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 29 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–8am194 flights81.1%
- 8am–11am204 flights70.4%
- 11am–2pm390 flights64.8%
- 2pm–5pm342 flights51.9%
- 5pm–8pm55 flights74.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.1% of the time, against 51.9% for the afternoon window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 390 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
January is the weak month at 56.0% on time, against 83.9% in November. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 160 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 51.3%. 29 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Extreme weather accounts for 47% of the 42,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 47%Extreme weather
- 27%Carrier
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 47% 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 7.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,415 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 8.19%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 17.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 701 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.5% on time across 1,187 flights, 4 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,185 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 delay figures matter less here than the 8.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,078 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ASE to DFW questions
How often is ASE to DFW delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.6% of the 1,185 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ASE to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
65.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ASE to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 51.9%, 29 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 January delays on ASE to DFW?
January is the weakest month at 56.0% on time, compared with 83.9% in November. Across the year that is 28 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 ASE — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- ASE to DEN, a related route75.2%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- ASE to LAX, a related route73.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ASE to DFW and DFW to ASE 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.