Route reliability record
CID→DFW
Cedar Rapids to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,190
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 685 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.3 hours on average. That rests on 1,190 CID to DFW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 573 at 85.8% on time.
Best time to fly CID to DFW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.7%, against 79.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,156 completed flights
Avg delay
137 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
85.8% on time across 573 flights
These figures cover 1,190 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 85.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 526 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 573 | 85.8% | 83 min | 1.40% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 91 | 81.6% | 104 min | 3.30% | B− |
| American Airlines | 526 | 71.5% | 170 min | 3.61% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.6% 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.
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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 | 84.6% | 85.8% | 1.40% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. CID → DFWCedar Rapids to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 68.9% | 71.5% | 3.61% | 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.
- 5am–8am465 flights88.4%
- 8am–11am51 flights94.0%
- 11am–2pm355 flights71.5%
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm313 flights72.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. 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 71.5% on time against 94.0% 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 465 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CID 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 CID to DFW, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 94.0% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 71.5%, a wide gap of 22.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am88.4%
- 8–11am94.0%
- 11am–2pm71.5%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm72.1%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 60.2%. July is the strongest month at 86.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. August was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.2%, a spread of 18 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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 32,791 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.52%, 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
9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.9% on time across 1,190 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,190 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. July runs 86.8% on time and March 60.2%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,156 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CID to DFW questions
How often is CID 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 20.8% of the 1,190 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 85.8% on time across 573 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 71.5%, 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 94.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 71.5%, 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 86.8% in July. Across the year that is 27 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 DFW85.8%
- American Airlines on CID to DFW71.5%
- CID to ORD, a related route71.6%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- CID to DEN, a related route78.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record81.6%
- American Airlines on-time record71.5%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.