Route reliability record
DAL→COS
Dallas to Colorado Springs
- Flights
- 786
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 602 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 786 DAL to COS flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAL to COS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 78.1%, against 75.0% 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
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 779 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.0% on time across 786 flights
These figures cover 786 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DAL to COS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 786 | 75.0% | 57 min | 0.89% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas to Colorado Springs
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAL → COSDallas to Colorado Springs | Southwest Airlines | 74.3% | 75.0% | 0.89% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | SkyWest Airlines | 72.1% | 73.9% | 2.44% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 6267 17:27 |
| 3. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | American Airlines | 66.7% | 68.3% | 2.41% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am232 flights94.3%
- 11am–2pm118 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm92 flights72.5%
- 5pm–8pm160 flights58.9%
- 8pm–5am180 flights58.7%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.7% on time, against 94.3% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 232 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DAL to COS 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 DAL to COS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 94.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 58.7%, a wide gap of 35.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am94.3%
- 11am–2pm84.6%
- 2–5pm72.5%
- 5–8pm58.9%
- 8pm–5am58.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
June is the worst month at 60.0% on time, 26 points below January, the best at 85.7%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 75 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 to one. The split is drawn from 10,838 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 602 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 81.3% on time across 786 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 786 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in COS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 786 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 75.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 779 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAL to COS questions
How often is DAL to COS delayed?
About 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 25.0% of the 786 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DAL to COS compared with the rest of the country?
75.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAL to COS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 94.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.7%, 36 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 DAL to COS?
June is the weakest month at 60.0% on time, compared with 85.7% in January. 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
- COS to DAL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- DEN to COS, a related route76.5%
- DAL to ATL, a related route78.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DAL to COS and COS to DAL 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.