Route reliability record
CHA→DFW
Chattanooga to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,640
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 695 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,640 CHA to DFW flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly CHA to DFW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.0%, against 78.6% 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
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,575 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
79.0% on time across 1,239 flights
These figures cover 1,640 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 CHA 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 Airthin sample | 236 | 84.3% | 94 min | 2.12% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 1,239 | 79.0% | 109 min | 3.47% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 96 | 70.5% | 158 min | 1.04% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 62.9% | 96 min | 7.25% | D− |
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 16 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–8am534 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am101 flights85.6%
- 11am–2pm299 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm321 flights73.4%
- 5pm–8pm283 flights69.3%
- 8pm–5am102 flights69.6%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.6% of the time, against 69.3% for the evening window. That is 16 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 534 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.
June is the worst month at 68.2% on time, 18 points below February, the best at 85.7%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.2%. 13 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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 37,359 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 14,000 of the 37,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.29%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% 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 695 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 72.9% on time across 1,643 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,640 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 3.29% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,575 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CHA to DFW questions
How often is CHA 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 21.4% of the 1,640 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CHA to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
78.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CHA to DFW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.3%, 16 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 CHA to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 68.2% on time, compared with 85.7% 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 CHA — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on CHA to DFW84.3%
- PSA Airlines on CHA to DFW79.0%
- CHA to ATL, a related route87.5%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- CHA to ORD, a related route70.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record79.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CHA to DFW and DFW to CHA 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.