Route reliability record
DFW→COS
Dallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs
- Flights
- 1,934
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 697 at 73.9% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to COS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.2%, against 72.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,885 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.33%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.9% on time across 697 flights
These figures cover 1,934 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to COS
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 200 | 89.3% | 38 min | 1.50% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 697 | 73.9% | 74 min | 2.44% | C |
| American Airlines | 1,037 | 68.3% | 67 min | 2.41% | C |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 73.9%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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.
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 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 | 74.3% | 75.0% | 0.89% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | SkyWest Airlines | 72.1% | 73.9% | 2.44% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 6267 17:27 |
| 3. DFW → COSDallas-Fort Worth to Colorado Springs | American Airlines | 66.7% | 68.3% | 2.41% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 23 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am491 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm305 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm463 flights68.5%
- 5pm–8pm379 flights65.8%
- 8pm–5am296 flights61.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.0% on time, against 83.6% 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 491 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to COS 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 COS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 83.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.0%, a wide gap of 22.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am83.6%
- 11am–2pm80.1%
- 2–5pm68.5%
- 5–8pm65.8%
- 8pm–5am61.0%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 58.5% on time, 20 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. August was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.9%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 35,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 35,257 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.33% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.5% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.9% on time across 1,933 flights, 5 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 5 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 78.8% on time and June 58.5%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,885 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 four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.5% of the 1,934 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 73.9% on time across 697 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 68.3%, a gap of 6 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 83.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.0%, 23 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 COS?
June is the weakest month at 58.5% on time, compared with 78.8% in March. Across the year that is 20 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 COS89.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to COS73.9%
- American Airlines on DFW to COS68.3%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- DEN to COS, a related route76.5%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record89.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.9%
- American Airlines on-time record68.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.
Embed DFW to COS’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.