Route reliability record
DFW→AEX
Dallas-Fort Worth to Alexandria
- Flights
- 1,045
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 285 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, more than four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,045 DFW to AEX flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to AEX: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.3%, against 84.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 998 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
84.8% on time across 721 flights
These figures cover 1,045 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 AEX
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 | 721 | 84.8% | 58 min | 3.74% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 324 | 82.4% | 75 min | 5.25% | B− |
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 18 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–11am328 flights87.3%
- 11am–2pm37 flights97.1%
- 2pm–5pm327 flights79.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am353 flights83.9%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 97.1% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 79.6%. 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 353 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 February, the best at 94.3%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 79.0%. 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 10,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 18%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,162 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.21%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
5.8% 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 285 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 82.9% on time across 1,045 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,045 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 AEX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.21% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 998 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to AEX questions
How often is DFW to AEX 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 15.9% of the 1,045 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to AEX compared with the rest of the country?
84.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 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 AEX?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 97.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 79.6%, 18 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 DFW to AEX?
August is the weakest month at 74.4% on time, compared with 94.3% in February. 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
- AEX to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to AEX84.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to AEX82.4%
- 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 record84.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to AEX and AEX 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.