Route reliability record
DFW→MLI
Dallas-Fort Worth to Moline
- Flights
- 1,015
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 691 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,015 DFW to MLI flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to MLI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 92.6%, against 84.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 986 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
87.9% on time across 665 flights
These figures cover 1,015 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to MLI
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 | 665 | 87.9% | 55 min | 1.80% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 57 | 83.9% | 89 min | 1.75% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 293 | 77.3% | 72 min | 4.44% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to MLI
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.
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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am293 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm198 flights79.4%
- 2pm–5pm164 flights84.5%
- 5pm–8pm27 flights—
- 8pm–5am333 flights79.9%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 79.4% on time against 93.4% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 333 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to MLI 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 MLI, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 93.4% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 79.4%, a wide gap of 14.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am93.4%
- 11am–2pm79.4%
- 2–5pm84.5%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am79.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 91.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 9,696 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,696 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 9,696 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 93.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.56%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The 691 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 runs 84.5% on time across 1,013 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,015 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MLI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,015 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 986 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to MLI questions
How often is DFW to MLI delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.3% of the 1,015 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to MLI compared with the rest of the country?
84.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 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 MLI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 79.4%, 14 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 MLI?
March is the weakest month at 72.9% on time, compared with 91.3% in October. Across the year that is 18 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
- MLI to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to MLI87.9%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to MLI77.3%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to MLI, a related route68.0%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record77.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to MLI and MLI 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.