Route reliability record
DFW→COU
Dallas-Fort Worth to Columbia
- Flights
- 1,221
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 490 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,221 DFW to COU flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to COU: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.5%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,182 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
82.0% on time across 1,172 flights
These figures cover 1,221 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 COU
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 | 1,172 | 82.0% | 54 min | 2.82% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 44 | 72.1% | 60 min | 2.27% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 166 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to COU
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 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–11am365 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm367 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm129 flights79.0%
- 8pm–5am359 flights74.7%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.7% of the time, against 74.7% for the overnight window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 367 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.
June is the worst month at 70.5% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 93.2%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.3%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 12,043 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 87.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.78%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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.
At 490 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 82.4% on time across 1,220 flights, within about 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 1,221 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 COU 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. February runs 93.2% on time and June 70.5%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,182 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to COU questions
How often is DFW to COU delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.4% of the 1,221 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to COU compared with the rest of the country?
81.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to COU?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 74.7%, 13 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 COU?
June is the weakest month at 70.5% on time, compared with 93.2% in February. 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
- COU to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ORD to COU, a related route70.4%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record60.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to COU and COU 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.