Route reliability record
DFW→ASE
Dallas-Fort Worth to Aspen
- Flights
- 1,187
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 701 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,187 DFW to ASE flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to ASE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.4%, against 69.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,056 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
69.5% on time across 1,187 flights
These figures cover 1,187 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to ASE
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,187 | 69.5% | 77 min | 4.72% | C− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Aspen
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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → ASEDallas-Fort Worth to Aspen | SkyWest Airlines | 66.2% | 69.5% | 4.72% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. DFW → EGEDallas-Fort Worth to Eagle | American Airlines | 60.9% | 62.5% | 2.52% | 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 14 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–11am538 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm227 flights61.7%
- 2pm–5pm200 flights62.6%
- 5pm–8pm222 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 61.7% on time against 75.2% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 538 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
December is the weak month at 54.6% on time, against 86.4% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 160 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 55.9%. 28 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. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 25,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 23%Extreme weather
- 8%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,858 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.72%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 701 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 65.4% on time across 1,185 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,187 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 ASE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.72% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,056 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ASE questions
How often is DFW to ASE delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.5% of the 1,187 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to ASE compared with the rest of the country?
69.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to ASE?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 75.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 61.7%, 14 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 December delays on DFW to ASE?
December is the weakest month at 54.6% on time, compared with 86.4% in April. Across the year that is 32 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
- ASE to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DEN to ASE, a related route74.8%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record69.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. DFW to ASE and ASE to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to ASE’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.