Route reliability record
DAL→COS
Dallas to Colorado Springs
- Flights
- 821
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 602 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 821 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 Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.4% of the time and Saturday flights 81.7%, against 74.0% 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
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 812 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.0% on time across 821 flights
These figures cover 821 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
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 | 821 | 74.0% | 58 min | 0.85% | C+ |
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 | 73.4% | 74.0% | 0.85% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | SkyWest Airlines | 69.9% | 72.4% | 3.44% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 6267 19:30 |
| 3. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | American Airlines | 62.6% | 64.8% | 3.36% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 1170 14:51 |
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 38 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–8am8 flights—
- 8am–11am253 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm93 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm131 flights71.3%
- 5pm–8pm131 flights61.2%
- 8pm–5am205 flights54.2%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.2% on time, against 92.4% 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 253 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.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 84 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.8%. 14 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 64% of the 12,000 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.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
64% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 12,128 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 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, below the national 1.81% 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
7.5% 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 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. 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 81.7% on time across 821 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 821 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. 821 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 74.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 812 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 26.0% of the 821 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DAL to COS compared with the rest of the country?
74.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C+ 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 92.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.2%, 38 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 route74.1%
- DEN to COS, a related route75.8%
- DAL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.0%
- 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. 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.