Route reliability record
AUS→MFE
Austin to McAllen
- Flights
- 1,032
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 279 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,032 AUS to MFE flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly AUS to MFE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.3%, against 83.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,026 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
83.8% on time across 1,032 flights
These figures cover 1,032 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to MFE
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 | 1,032 | 83.8% | 89 min | 0.39% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on AUS to MFE
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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin to McAllen
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. AUS → MFEAustin to McAllen | SkyWest Airlines | 83.5% | 83.8% | 0.39% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 4177 10:30 |
| 2. AUS → HRLAustin to Harlingen | Southwest Airlines | 72.0% | 72.2% | 0.27% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,032 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am211 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm153 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm345 flights82.2%
- 5pm–8pm15 flights—
- 8pm–5am308 flights83.9%
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 86.3% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.2% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 345 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter AUS to MFE by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On AUS to MFE, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.3% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 82.2%, a narrow gap of 4.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am86.3%
- 11am–2pm83.6%
- 2–5pm82.2%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am83.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
June is the worst month at 76.5% on time, 15 points below September, the best at 91.9%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.6%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 69% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 69%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,796 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 10,000 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 279 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.1% on time across 1,032 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,032 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MFE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,032 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,026 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to MFE questions
How often is AUS to MFE 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 16.2% of the 1,032 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is AUS to MFE compared with the rest of the country?
83.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AUS to MFE?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.2%, 4 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 June delays on AUS to MFE?
June is the weakest month at 76.5% on time, compared with 91.9% in September. Across the year that is 15 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
- MFE to AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.9%
- DFW to MFE, a related route70.0%
- AUS to DFW, a related route74.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.8%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
Direction matters. AUS to MFE and MFE to AUS 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.