Route reliability record
CAE→DFW
Columbia to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 985
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 922 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 985 CAE to DFW flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 383 at 82.3% on time.
Best time to fly CAE to DFW: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.5%, against 81.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 950 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
82.3% on time across 383 flights
These figures cover 985 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CAE to DFW
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 383 | 82.3% | 129 min | 3.66% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 602 | 80.6% | 53 min | 2.66% | B |
PSA Airlines cancels 3.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Columbia to Dallas-Fort Worth
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CAE → DFWColumbia to Dallas-Fort Worth | PSA Airlines | 79.3% | 82.3% | 3.66% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. CAE → DFWColumbia to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 78.5% | 80.6% | 2.66% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 14 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights86.3%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm82 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm325 flights79.7%
- 5pm–8pm213 flights72.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 87.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 72.9%. 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 72.2% on time, 18 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.6%. 10 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. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 14,000 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.
- 42%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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. The split is drawn from 14,374 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,069 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.05%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
6.2% 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.
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. 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 runs 80.1% on time across 985 flights, within about a point 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. 985 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.05% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 950 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 five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.7% of the 985 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CAE to DFW?
PSA Airlines leads at 82.3% on time across 383 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 80.6%, a gap of 2 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CAE to DFW?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 72.9%, 14 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 CAE to DFW?
August is the weakest month at 72.2% on time, compared with 90.3% in February. Across the year that is 18 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 DFW80.6%
- CAE to ATL, a related route87.6%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- CAE to DCA, a related route72.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.6%
- 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.
Embed CAE to DFW’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.