Route reliability record
DFW→ASE
Dallas-Fort Worth to Aspen
- Flights
- 1,187
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 701 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to ASE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 74.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.8%, against 68.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 89 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,079 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
68.4% on time across 1,187 flights
These figures cover 1,187 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 | 68.4% | 79 min | 4.47% | C− |
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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 | 65.3% | 68.4% | 4.47% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. DFW → EGEDallas-Fort Worth to Eagle | American Airlines | 62.8% | 64.3% | 2.28% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am538 flights74.6%
- 11am–2pm227 flights57.0%
- 2pm–5pm144 flights60.3%
- 5pm–8pm278 flights69.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% 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 57.0% on time against 74.6% 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.
Explore
Filter DFW to ASE 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 DFW to ASE, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 74.6% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 57.0%, a wide gap of 17.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am74.6%
- 11am–2pm57.0%
- 2–5pm60.3%
- 5–8pm69.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 80.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 57.4%, a spread of 23 points.
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 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 21%Extreme weather
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,799 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.47%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
14.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg runs 68.3% on time across 1,185 flights, within half a point 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 1,187 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 4.47% 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. 1,079 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ASE questions
How often is DFW to ASE delayed?
About 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 31.6% of the 1,187 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
68.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 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 74.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 57.0%, 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 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 route68.8%
- DEN to ASE, a related route74.2%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.4%
- Flying to ski country: which routes into the mountains run on time
- The US routes with the most cancellations
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.
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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.