Route reliability record
MIA→CMH
Miami to Columbus
- Flights
- 1,119
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 990 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,119 MIA to CMH flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly MIA to CMH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.7%, against 78.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,109 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
80.5% on time across 912 flights
These figures cover 1,119 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 MIA to CMH
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 15 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 87.2% | 58 min | 2.50% | A |
| Envoy Air | 912 | 80.5% | 51 min | 0.11% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 159 | 61.5% | 58 min | 1.89% | D |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Miami to Columbus
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → CMHMiami to Columbus | Envoy Air | 80.4% | 80.5% | 0.11% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. FLL → CMHFort Lauderdale to Columbus | Spirit Airlines | 69.2% | 72.0% | 3.94% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → CMHFort Lauderdale to Columbus | Southwest Airlines | 57.2% | 58.0% | 1.30% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 33 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–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am118 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm54 flights57.4%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm90 flights71.9%
- 8pm–5am489 flights80.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. 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 57.4% on time against 90.6% for 8am–11am. 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 489 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
July is the worst month at 68.3% on time, 16 points below January, the best at 84.1%. 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 139 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.5%. 23 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 46% 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
46% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 12,777 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, 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
6.3% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 990 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 1,121 flights, 4 points above 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,119 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 CMH 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. January runs 84.1% on time and July 68.3%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,109 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MIA to CMH questions
How often is MIA to CMH delayed?
Roughly 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 21.9% of the 1,119 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is MIA to CMH compared with the rest of the country?
78.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MIA to CMH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 57.4%, 33 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 July delays on MIA to CMH?
July is the weakest month at 68.3% on time, compared with 84.1% in January. Across the year that is 16 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
- CMH to MIA — the return legseparate record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MIA to CMH80.5%
- Southwest Airlines on MIA to CMH61.5%
- MIA to ATL, a related route73.7%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.1%
- MIA to LGA, a related route68.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record87.5%
- American Airlines on-time record87.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.5%
- 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. MIA to CMH and CMH to MIA 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.