Route reliability record
DFW→ABI
Dallas-Fort Worth to Abilene
- Flights
- 1,749
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 158 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 3 points 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,749 DFW to ABI flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to ABI: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.8%, against 80.7% 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
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,706 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
80.7% on time across 1,749 flights
These figures cover 1,749 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 DFW to ABI
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 | 1,749 | 80.7% | 59 min | 2.40% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to ABI
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 15 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–8am—
- 8am–11am363 flights87.1%
- 11am–2pm354 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm170 flights77.0%
- 5pm–8pm391 flights73.9%
- 8pm–5am471 flights76.9%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 73.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 471 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
July is the worst month at 72.4% on time, 16 points below March, the best at 87.9%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.8%. 13 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 54% of the 19,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
54% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 19,251 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 158 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 82.5% on time across 1,749 flights, within 2 points 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 1,749 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 ABI 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. March runs 87.9% on time and July 72.4%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,706 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ABI questions
How often is DFW to ABI 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 19.3% of the 1,749 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to ABI compared with the rest of the country?
80.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to ABI?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.9%, 15 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 July delays on DFW to ABI?
July is the weakest month at 72.4% on time, compared with 87.9% in March. Across the year that is 16 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
- ABI to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.7%
- 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. DFW to ABI and ABI to DFW 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.