Route reliability record
DFW→CMI
Dallas-Fort Worth to Champaign
- Flights
- 715
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 692 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 715 DFW to CMI flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to CMI: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.9%, against 85.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 697 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.82%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
85.2% on time across 715 flights
These figures cover 715 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to CMI
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 | 715 | 85.2% | 66 min | 1.82% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to CMI
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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Champaign
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 → CMIDallas-Fort Worth to Champaign | Envoy Air | 83.6% | 85.2% | 1.82% | 11am–2pm, Tue | MQ 3887 18:49 |
| 2. DFW → BMIDallas-Fort Worth to Bloomington | Envoy Air | 82.2% | 83.5% | 1.51% | 11am–2pm, Tue | MQ 4254 21:01 |
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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm365 flights89.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm262 flights84.5%
- 8pm–5am88 flights69.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 89.7% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 69.0%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to CMI 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 CMI, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 89.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 69.0%, a wide gap of 20.7 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm89.7%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm84.5%
- 8pm–5am69.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 73.6% on time, 18 points below January, the best at 91.5%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.2%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 6,780 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 12%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,780 reported delay minutes.
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,780 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.70%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The 692 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 86.8% on time across 715 flights, within 2 points 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. 715 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 CMI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 715 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 85.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 697 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to CMI questions
How often is DFW to CMI 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 14.8% of the 715 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to CMI compared with the rest of the country?
85.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 CMI?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 89.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 69.0%, 21 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 CMI?
June is the weakest month at 73.6% on time, compared with 91.5% in January. Across the year that is 18 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
- CMI to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to CMI, a related route72.1%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to CMI and CMI 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.