Route reliability record
MAF→DAL
Midland to Dallas
- Flights
- 1,351
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 319 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,351 MAF to DAL flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly MAF to DAL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 92.1%, against 88.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,329 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
88.9% on time across 1,351 flights
These figures cover 1,351 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 MAF to DAL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,351 | 88.9% | 62 min | 1.41% | A |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Midland to Dallas
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MAF → DALMidland to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 87.6% | 88.9% | 1.41% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MAF → DFWMidland to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 81.5% | 83.8% | 2.71% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 3. MAF → DFWMidland to Dallas-Fort Worth | SkyWest Airlines | 79.4% | 81.9% | 3.07% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 4. MAF → DFWMidland to Dallas-Fort Worth | PSA Airlines | 74.3% | 78.8% | 5.76% | 11am–2pm, Fri | — |
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 14 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–8am362 flights95.8%
- 8am–11am167 flights94.0%
- 11am–2pm194 flights90.4%
- 2pm–5pm297 flights83.9%
- 5pm–8pm330 flights82.2%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.8% of the time, against 82.2% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 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.
August is the worst month at 84.0% on time, 12 points below February, the best at 96.2%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 134 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.5%. 10 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 42% of the 9,152 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 9,152 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 9,152 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.41% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 319 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.9% on time across 1,350 flights, 10 points below 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,351 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 DAL 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 96.2% on time and August 84.0%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,329 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MAF to DAL questions
How often is MAF to DAL delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.1% of the 1,351 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MAF to DAL compared with the rest of the country?
88.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MAF to DAL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.2%, 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 August delays on MAF to DAL?
August is the weakest month at 84.0% on time, compared with 96.2% in February. Across the year that is 12 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
- DAL to MAF — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- MAF to DFW, a related route82.7%
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- MAF to DEN, a related route81.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record88.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MAF to DAL and DAL to MAF 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.