Route reliability record
DFW→CHA
Dallas-Fort Worth to Chattanooga
- Flights
- 1,643
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 695 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,643 DFW to CHA flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to CHA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.9%, against 72.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,592 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
72.5% on time across 1,242 flights
These figures cover 1,643 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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 CHA
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 Airthin sample | 235 | 82.6% | 46 min | 2.13% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 96 | 77.1% | 51 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 1,242 | 72.5% | 91 min | 3.22% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 70 | 40.0% | 94 min | 7.14% | F− |
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 19 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–11am544 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm101 flights68.7%
- 2pm–5pm396 flights71.5%
- 5pm–8pm371 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am231 flights64.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.0% on time, against 82.6% 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 544 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 64.0% on time, 19 points below November, the best at 83.1%. 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 152 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.8%. 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 56% of the 37,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
56% 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 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 36,621 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 82.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 11.9% 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 695 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 78.6% on time across 1,640 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,643 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 CHA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,592 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to CHA questions
How often is DFW to CHA 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 27.1% of the 1,643 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DFW to CHA compared with the rest of the country?
72.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 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 CHA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.0%, 19 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 DFW to CHA?
June is the weakest month at 64.0% on time, compared with 83.1% in November. Across the year that is 19 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
- CHA to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to CHA82.6%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to CHA72.5%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ATL to CHA, a related route83.2%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record72.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to CHA and CHA 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.