Route reliability record
DFW→MSN
Dallas-Fort Worth to Madison
- Flights
- 1,091
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 821 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,091 DFW to MSN flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DFW to MSN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 72.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 66.9%, against 63.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 143 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,066 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.83%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
63.0% on time across 1,090 flights
These figures cover 1,091 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.3% 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 MSN
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 Airthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,090 | 63.0% | 89 min | 1.83% | D |
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am366 flights72.6%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm362 flights63.6%
- 5pm–8pm106 flights47.1%
- 8pm–5am256 flights54.8%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.1% on time, against 72.6% 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 366 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to MSN 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 MSN, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 72.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 47.1%, a wide gap of 25.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am72.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm63.6%
- 5–8pm47.1%
- 8pm–5am54.8%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
May is the best month on the calendar at 73.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 66.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.5%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 35,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
53% 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 11 to one. The split is drawn from 35,038 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.83% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.46%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
17.3% 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 821 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 74.6% on time across 1,091 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,091 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 MSN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,091 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 63.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,066 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to MSN questions
How often is DFW to MSN delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 37.0% of the 1,091 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DFW to MSN compared with the rest of the country?
63.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 14 points against it. That is worth a D on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to MSN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 72.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 47.1%, 25 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 September delays on DFW to MSN?
September is the weakest month at 50.6% on time, compared with 73.6% in May. 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
- MSN to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to MSN, a related route71.0%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record63.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to MSN and MSN to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to MSN’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.