Route reliability record
DFW→CLL
Dallas-Fort Worth to College Station
- Flights
- 1,214
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 164 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% 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 an A− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,214 DFW to CLL flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to CLL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.0%, against 85.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,170 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
85.3% on time across 1,147 flights
These figures cover 1,214 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 CLL
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 | 1,147 | 85.3% | 53 min | 3.31% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 82.8% | 68 min | 4.48% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to CLL
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,214 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am362 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm129 flights88.0%
- 2pm–5pm190 flights82.7%
- 5pm–8pm178 flights80.7%
- 8pm–5am355 flights82.0%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 80.7% for the evening window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,214 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 78.9% on time, 10 points below September, the best at 88.9%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.6%. 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 47% of the 9,418 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,418 reported delay minutes.
47% 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 9,418 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 3.38%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 164 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 85.0% on time across 1,214 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 1,214 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 CLL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.38% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 55 minutes; 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. 1,170 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to CLL questions
How often is DFW to CLL delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.9% of the 1,214 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is DFW to CLL compared with the rest of the country?
85.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to CLL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.7%, 10 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 CLL?
July is the weakest month at 78.9% on time, compared with 88.9% in September. Across the year that is 10 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
- CLL 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 record85.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to CLL and CLL 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.