Route reliability record
CHS→DFW
Charleston to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,250
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 987 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 3 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,250 CHS to DFW flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly CHS to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.1%, against 80.5% 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
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,209 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
78.0% on time across 946 flights
These figures cover 1,250 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 CHS 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 | 172 | 94.0% | 94 min | 1.74% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 81.1% | 104 min | 1.75% | B |
| American Airlines | 946 | 78.0% | 97 min | 2.75% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 77.8% | 82 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 28 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–8am400 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am9 flights—
- 11am–2pm212 flights89.8%
- 2pm–5pm361 flights76.7%
- 5pm–8pm266 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 90.5% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 400 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 73.5% on time, 16 points below December, the best at 89.0%. 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 148 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.6%. 8 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 23,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
45% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 22,957 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 8,602 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.80%.
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. 9.0% 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 987 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 71.0% on time across 1,247 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,250 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. December runs 89.0% on time and June 73.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,209 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CHS to DFW questions
How often is CHS 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 19.5% of the 1,250 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CHS to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
80.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CHS to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.9%, 28 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 CHS to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 73.5% on time, compared with 89.0% in December. Across the year that is 16 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 CHS — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on CHS to DFW94.0%
- PSA Airlines on CHS to DFW81.1%
- American Airlines on CHS to DFW78.0%
- CHS to ATL, a related route90.2%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- CHS to CLT, a related route83.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record94.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record81.1%
- American Airlines on-time record78.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. CHS to DFW and DFW to CHS 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.