Route reliability record
CAE→DFW
Columbia to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 983
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 922 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 5 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 a little over an hour on average. That rests on 983 CAE to DFW flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Best time to fly CAE to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.5% of the time and Friday flights 87.4%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 953 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
82.0% on time across 636 flights
These figures cover 983 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 CAE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 26 | 92.3% | 20 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 321 | 82.3% | 114 min | 3.12% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 636 | 82.0% | 64 min | 2.36% | B |
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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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm82 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm325 flights80.1%
- 5pm–8pm203 flights74.2%
- 8pm–5am8 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.5% of the time, against 74.2% for the evening window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CAE to DFW 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 CAE to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 74.2%, a wide gap of 13.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.5%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm87.0%
- 2–5pm80.1%
- 5–8pm74.2%
- 8pm–5am—
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 17 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 73.6% on time, 17 points below February, the best at 90.3%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.0%, a spread of 13 points.
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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,479 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,627 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
6.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 922 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.
The return leg runs 80.9% on time across 983 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 983 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 DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 983 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 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 953 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CAE to DFW questions
How often is CAE 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 17.6% of the 983 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CAE to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
82.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 CAE to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.2%, 13 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 CAE to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 73.6% on time, compared with 90.3% in February. Across the year that is 17 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 CAE — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CAE to DFW82.3%
- Envoy Air on CAE to DFW82.0%
- CAE to ATL, a related route86.0%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- CAE to DCA, a related route72.6%
- American Airlines on-time record92.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CAE to DFW and DFW to CAE 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.