Route reliability record
MEM→DFW
Memphis to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,347
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 431 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,347 MEM to DFW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 600 at 77.1% on time.
Best time to fly MEM to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.1%, against 76.1% 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
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,283 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.64%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.1% on time across 600 flights
These figures cover 2,347 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 MEM to DFW
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 | 600 | 77.1% | 83 min | 1.83% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,551 | 76.0% | 95 min | 2.97% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 157 | 74.7% | 133 min | 1.91% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 39 | 72.2% | 75 min | 5.13% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 77.1%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MEM 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 Memphis to Dallas-Fort Worth
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MEM → DFWMemphis to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 75.7% | 77.1% | 1.83% | 11am–2pm, Mon | — |
| 2. MEM → DFWMemphis to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 73.7% | 76.0% | 2.97% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1940 05:38 |
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 about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am724 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am280 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm489 flights69.9%
- 2pm–5pm296 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm479 flights68.7%
- 8pm–5am79 flights67.1%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.6% of the time, against 67.1% for the overnight 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 724 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MEM 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 MEM to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 67.1%, a wide gap of 18.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.6%
- 8–11am81.5%
- 11am–2pm69.9%
- 2–5pm72.6%
- 5–8pm68.7%
- 8pm–5am67.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 63.0%. February is the strongest month at 83.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. October was the busiest month here, with 243 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.7%, a spread of 9 points.
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 51,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 51,419 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 51,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.64%, 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
9.5% 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.
At 431 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 68.7% on time across 2,344 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,347 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 83.6% on time and November 63.0%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 2,283 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MEM to DFW questions
How often is MEM to DFW delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.9% of the 2,347 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 MEM to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 77.1% on time across 600 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 76.0%, a gap of about a point. 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 MEM to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.1%, 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 November delays on MEM to DFW?
November is the weakest month at 63.0% on time, compared with 83.6% in February. Across the year that is 21 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 MEM — the return legseparate record
- Memphis International (MEM) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MEM to DFW77.1%
- American Airlines on MEM to DFW76.0%
- PSA Airlines on MEM to DFW74.7%
- MEM to ATL, a related route86.2%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- MEM to ORD, a related route74.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.1%
- American Airlines on-time record76.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record74.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MEM to DFW and DFW to MEM 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.