Route reliability record

DFW→MAF

Dallas-Fort Worth to Midland

Flights: 2,934
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 309 mi
Carriers: 3

This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,934 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,769 at 82.2% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.2% on time across 1,769 flights.

On time

80.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,847 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.79%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Envoy

82.2% on time across 1,769 flights

These figures cover 2,934 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Which airline is most reliable on DFW to MAF

The three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to MAF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	1,769	82.2%	55 min	2.60%	B
SkyWest Airlines	782	78.0%	83 min	2.17%	B
PSA Airlines	383	76.6%	98 min	4.96%	B−

PSA Airlines cancels 5.0% 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.

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 17 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am334 flights85.1%
8am–11am595 flights90.0%
11am–2pm299 flights85.3%
2pm–5pm529 flights75.8%
5pm–8pm484 flights78.1%
8pm–5am693 flights72.6%

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 90.0% of the time, against 72.6% for the overnight window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 693 flights scheduled in it.

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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, August worst

August is the worst month at 71.0% on time, 20 points below February, the best at 91.1%. 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 282 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.1%. 8 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 39,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
33%
Extreme weather
16%
National Airspace System
13%

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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 39,150 reported delay minutes.

37% 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 2 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.

Cancellations run at 2.79%, 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

7.4% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 309 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 82.7% on time across 2,933 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.

The sample behind these figures is 2,934 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.

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 91.1% on time and August 71.0%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,847 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

DFW to MAF questions

How often is DFW to MAF delayed?

About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.6% of the 2,934 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 MAF?

Envoy Air leads at 82.2% on time across 1,769 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 76.6%, 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 MAF?

The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.6%, 17 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 August delays on DFW to MAF?

August is the weakest month at 71.0% on time, compared with 91.1% in February. 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.

Where to go next

Direction matters. DFW to MAF and MAF to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures