Route reliability record
COU→DFW
Columbia to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,220
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 490 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,220 COU to DFW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly COU to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.0%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,179 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
83.2% on time across 1,171 flights
These figures cover 1,220 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on COU 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 Air | 1,171 | 83.2% | 98 min | 2.82% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 44 | 62.8% | 141 min | 2.27% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 169 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on COU 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 17 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–8am364 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm362 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm459 flights79.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.0% of the time, against 69.7% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 459 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
August is the worst month at 74.4% on time, 20 points below January, the best at 94.1%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.7%. 23 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 51% of the 21,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Extreme weather
- 17%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 21,229 reported delay minutes.
51% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 2.79%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
6.9% 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.
At 490 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 81.6% on time across 1,221 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,220 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. January runs 94.1% on time and August 74.4%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
COU to DFW questions
How often is COU to DFW delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.6% of the 1,220 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is COU to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
82.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on COU to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 69.7%, 17 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 August delays on COU to DFW?
August is the weakest month at 74.4% on time, compared with 94.1% in January. Across the year that is 20 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 COU — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- COU to ORD, a related route72.7%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- LGA to DFW, a related route70.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record83.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record62.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record60.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. COU to DFW and DFW to COU 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.