Route reliability record
MFE→AUS
McAllen to Austin
- Flights
- 1,032
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 279 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,032 MFE to AUS flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly MFE to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.7% of the time and Saturday flights 89.7%, against 86.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 90 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,026 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.6% on time across 1,032 flights
These figures cover 1,032 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 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 | 86.6% | 99 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.
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 11 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–8am365 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm302 flights82.7%
- 8pm–5am—
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 93.7% of the time, against 82.7% for the evening window. That is 11 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 79.3% on time, 15 points below March, the best at 94.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.3%. 5 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. Carrier accounts for 77% of the 13,000 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.
- 77%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,490 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 10,000 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, below the national 1.81% 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
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 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 82.7% on time across 1,032 flights, 4 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 4 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 86.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,026 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 seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.4% of the 1,032 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MFE to AUS compared with the rest of the country?
86.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 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 93.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.7%, 11 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 MFE to AUS?
August is the weakest month at 79.3% on time, compared with 94.3% in March. Across the year that is 15 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 route78.7%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.1%
- DFW to AUS, a related route67.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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.
Embed MFE to AUS’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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.