Route reliability record
MCI→DFW
Kansas City to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,523
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 460 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,523 MCI to DFW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 373 at 82.9% on time.
Best time to fly MCI to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.6% of the time and Thursday flights 83.6%, against 78.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,448 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
82.9% on time across 373 flights
These figures cover 2,523 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCI to DFW
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 373 | 82.9% | 93 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 2,020 | 78.3% | 93 min | 2.43% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 72.7% | 100 min | 6.38% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 83 | 67.6% | 77 min | 13.25% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 82.9%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCI to DFW
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kansas City to Dallas-Fort Worth
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. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCI → DFWKansas City to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 82.5% | 82.9% | 0.54% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
| 2. MCI → DALKansas City to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 79.7% | 80.6% | 1.09% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. MCI → DFWKansas City to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 76.4% | 78.3% | 2.43% | 5am–8am, Thu | AA 1098 05:30 |
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 19 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am721 flights86.6%
- 8am–11am396 flights80.9%
- 11am–2pm488 flights80.7%
- 2pm–5pm359 flights72.2%
- 5pm–8pm439 flights67.9%
- 8pm–5am120 flights71.6%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.6% of the time, against 67.9% for the evening window. That is 19 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 721 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCI to DFW 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 MCI to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 67.9%, a wide gap of 18.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.6%
- 8–11am80.9%
- 11am–2pm80.7%
- 2–5pm72.2%
- 5–8pm67.9%
- 8pm–5am71.6%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
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.
December is the weak month at 67.6% on time, against 87.3% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 229 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.0%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 48,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 48,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 48,397 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 86.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.58%, 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
8.7% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 460 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 71.1% on time across 2,526 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,523 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 DFW 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 87.3% on time and December 67.6%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,448 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to DFW questions
How often is MCI to DFW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.4% of the 2,523 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCI to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 82.9% on time across 373 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 78.3%, a gap of 5 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 MCI to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.9%, 19 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 December delays on MCI to DFW?
December is the weakest month at 67.6% on time, compared with 87.3% 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.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MCI to DFW82.9%
- American Airlines on MCI to DFW78.3%
- MCI to DEN, a related route78.1%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.9%
- American Airlines on-time record78.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MCI to DFW and DFW to MCI 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.