Route reliability record
DFW→HSV
Dallas-Fort Worth to Huntsville
- Flights
- 2,056
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 603 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B−, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,056 DFW to HSV flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,022 at 82.8% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to HSV: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.0%, against 76.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,988 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
82.8% on time across 1,022 flights
These figures cover 2,056 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 HSV
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 82.8% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 73.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 722 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,022 | 82.8% | 64 min | 2.05% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 98 | 80.4% | 67 min | 1.02% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 722 | 73.5% | 95 min | 4.43% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 214 | 51.5% | 97 min | 4.67% | F− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.4% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Huntsville
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → HSVDallas-Fort Worth to Huntsville | Envoy Air | 81.1% | 82.8% | 2.05% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → HSVDallas-Fort Worth to Huntsville | PSA Airlines | 70.2% | 73.5% | 4.43% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am253 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am404 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm202 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm286 flights79.5%
- 5pm–8pm496 flights71.9%
- 8pm–5am415 flights63.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.4% on time, against 86.0% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 496 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 71.2%. February is the strongest month at 87.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 16 points. July was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.6%. 12 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 53% 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
53% 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 39,000 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 39,159 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.11%, 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. 10.3% 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 603 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 runs 76.3% on time across 2,055 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 2,056 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 HSV after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.11% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,988 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to HSV questions
How often is DFW to HSV delayed?
About 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 23.7% of the 2,056 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to HSV?
Envoy Air leads at 82.8% on time across 1,022 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 73.5%, a gap of 9 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 HSV?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.4%, 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 March delays on DFW to HSV?
March is the weakest month at 71.2% on time, compared with 87.5% in February. Across the year that is 16 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
- HSV to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to HSV82.8%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to HSV73.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to HSV51.5%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ATL to HSV, a related route84.4%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record73.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to HSV and HSV 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.