Route reliability record
CID→DFW
Cedar Rapids to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,174
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 685 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.3 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,174 CID to DFW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 537 at 84.4% on time.
Best time to fly CID to DFW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.4%, against 77.5% 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
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,136 completed flights
Avg delay
140 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
84.4% on time across 537 flights
These figures cover 1,174 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 CID to DFW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 84.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 487 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 537 | 84.4% | 86 min | 1.86% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 150 | 74.3% | 125 min | 3.33% | C− |
| American Airlines | 487 | 70.7% | 175 min | 3.90% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.9% 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 Cedar Rapids 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. CID → DFWCedar Rapids to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 82.8% | 84.4% | 1.86% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. CID → DFWCedar Rapids to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 67.9% | 70.7% | 3.90% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 23 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am441 flights87.9%
- 8am–11am62 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm352 flights68.4%
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm313 flights69.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 68.4% on time against 91.8% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 441 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.6%. 18 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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 35,706 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.3% 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 685 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 74.1% on time across 1,174 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,174 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 2.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.3 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. 1,136 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CID to DFW questions
How often is CID to DFW delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.5% of the 1,174 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.3 hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CID to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 84.4% on time across 537 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 70.7%, a gap of 14 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 CID to DFW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 68.4%, 23 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 March delays on CID to DFW?
March is the weakest month at 60.2% on time, compared with 86.0% in September. Across the year that is 26 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 CID — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on CID to DFW84.4%
- PSA Airlines on CID to DFW74.3%
- American Airlines on CID to DFW70.7%
- CID to ORD, a related route72.1%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- CID to DEN, a related route77.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record74.3%
- American Airlines on-time record70.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CID to DFW and DFW to CID 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.