Route reliability record
CMH→DFW
Columbus to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,728
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 926 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,728 CMH to DFW flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly CMH to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Friday flights 84.5%, against 78.7% 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
78.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,671 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
77.4% on time across 1,406 flights
These figures cover 1,728 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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 CMH 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 315 | 84.6% | 81 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,406 | 77.4% | 108 min | 2.99% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 60.0% | 126 min | 16.67% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CMH to DFW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 21 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–8am587 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am140 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm364 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm328 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm181 flights66.9%
- 8pm–5am128 flights65.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.5% of the time, against 65.3% for the overnight window. That is 21 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 587 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.
December is the weak month at 70.3% on time, against 87.8% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 158 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.5%. 11 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%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 12 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 37,087 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 15,000 of the 37,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.81%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 926 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 70.3% on time across 1,729 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,728 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. September runs 87.8% on time and December 70.3%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,671 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CMH to DFW questions
How often is CMH 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 21.3% of the 1,728 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CMH to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
78.7% 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 CMH to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.3%, 21 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 December delays on CMH to DFW?
December is the weakest month at 70.3% on time, compared with 87.8% in September. 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 CMH — the return legseparate record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on CMH to DFW84.6%
- American Airlines on CMH to DFW77.4%
- CMH to ORD, a related route74.5%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- CMH to ATL, a related route85.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.6%
- American Airlines on-time record77.4%
- 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. CMH to DFW and DFW to CMH 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.