Route reliability record
DFW→COS
Dallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs
- Flights
- 1,934
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 592 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,934 DFW to COS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 610 at 72.4% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to COS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 75.7%, against 70.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 73 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,869 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.15%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.4% on time across 610 flights
These figures cover 1,934 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 COS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 72.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,070 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 254 | 87.6% | 47 min | 1.57% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 610 | 72.4% | 78 min | 3.44% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,070 | 64.8% | 69 min | 3.36% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to COS
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs
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 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAL → COSDallas to Colorado Springs | Southwest Airlines | 73.4% | 74.0% | 0.85% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | SkyWest Airlines | 69.9% | 72.4% | 3.44% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 6267 19:30 |
| 3. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | American Airlines | 62.6% | 64.8% | 3.36% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 1170 14:51 |
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 24 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am490 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm332 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm402 flights65.6%
- 5pm–8pm398 flights64.0%
- 8pm–5am312 flights56.8%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 81.0% 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 490 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
July is the worst month at 56.2% on time, 23 points below March, the best at 78.8%. 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 185 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.0%. 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. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 39,000 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
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 39,178 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 17,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.15%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% 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 592 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 77.8% on time across 1,934 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,934 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 COS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.15% 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. 1,869 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to COS questions
How often is DFW to COS 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 29.7% of the 1,934 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to COS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 72.4% on time across 610 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 64.8%, a gap of 8 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to COS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.8%, 24 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 COS?
July is the weakest month at 56.2% on time, compared with 78.8% in March. Across the year that is 23 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
- COS to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to COS87.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to COS72.4%
- American Airlines on DFW to COS64.8%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DEN to COS, a related route75.8%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.4%
- American Airlines on-time record64.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to COS and COS 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.