Route reliability record
DFW→DSM
Dallas-Fort Worth to Des Moines
- Flights
- 1,438
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 624 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,438 DFW to DSM flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DFW to DSM: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 71.9%, against 66.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,387 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
56.9% on time across 971 flights
These figures cover 1,438 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 DFW to DSM
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 297 | 88.3% | 48 min | 2.02% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 160 | 81.4% | 69 min | 2.50% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 10 | 80.0% | 67 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 971 | 56.9% | 95 min | 4.02% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to DSM
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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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 40 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am162 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am199 flights77.2%
- 11am–2pm287 flights63.6%
- 2pm–5pm394 flights62.1%
- 5pm–8pm39 flights81.1%
- 8pm–5am357 flights53.2%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.2% on time, against 93.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 394 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to DSM 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 DFW to DSM, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 53.2%, a wide gap of 40.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.2%
- 8–11am77.2%
- 11am–2pm63.6%
- 2–5pm62.1%
- 5–8pm81.1%
- 8pm–5am53.2%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
June is the worst month at 52.7% on time, 27 points below April, the best at 79.7%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 57.4%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 42,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 41,904 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.41%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
14.9% 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.
The 624 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.3% on time across 1,440 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,438 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 DSM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.41% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,387 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to DSM questions
How often is DFW to DSM delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.6% of the 1,438 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DFW to DSM compared with the rest of the country?
66.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to DSM?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.2%, 40 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 June delays on DFW to DSM?
June is the weakest month at 52.7% on time, compared with 79.7% in April. Across the year that is 27 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
- DSM to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to DSM88.3%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to DSM81.4%
- American Airlines on DFW to DSM56.9%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to DSM, a related route70.8%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record81.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to DSM and DSM to DFW 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.