Route reliability record
MFE→AUS
McAllen to Austin
- Flights
- 1,032
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 279 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,032 MFE to AUS flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Best time to fly MFE to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.1% of the time and Saturday flights 92.5%, against 87.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 98 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,027 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.1% on time across 1,032 flights
These figures cover 1,032 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 MFE to AUS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,032 | 87.1% | 111 min | 0.48% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on MFE to AUS
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 McAllen to Austin
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 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MFE → AUSMcAllen to Austin | SkyWest Airlines | 86.7% | 87.1% | 0.48% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4175 05:25 |
| 2. HRL → AUSHarlingen to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 81.1% | 81.2% | 0.14% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,032 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights83.4%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm302 flights84.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% 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 83.4% on time against 93.1% for 5am–8am. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MFE to AUS 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 MFE to AUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.1% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 83.4%, a real gap of 9.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.1%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm83.4%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm84.4%
- 8pm–5am—
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 13 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 80.9% on time, against 94.3% in March. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.7%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 77% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 77%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,669 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.3% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 279 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 83.8% on time across 1,032 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,032 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 AUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,032 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 87.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,027 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MFE to AUS questions
How often is MFE to AUS delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.9% of the 1,032 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is MFE to AUS compared with the rest of the country?
87.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MFE to AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 83.4%, 10 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 MFE to AUS?
December is the weakest month at 80.9% on time, compared with 94.3% in March. Across the year that is 13 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
- AUS to MFE — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- MFE to DFW, a related route80.5%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.2%
- MFE to IAH, a related route80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MFE to AUS and AUS to MFE 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.