Carrier route record

MQDFW→DSM

Envoy Air · Dallas-Fort Worth to Des Moines

Flights: 330
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on DFW to DSM 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 45 minutes. That rests on 330 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's DFW to DSM record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 324 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

66.5%

Every carrier on DFW to DSM, 1,434 flights

These figures cover 330 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

Envoy against every carrier on DFW to DSM

Envoy flew 330 of the 1,434 flights on DFW to DSM, about 23% of it. Its 85.2% on time is 19 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 85.2% to American at 57.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to DSM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	330	85.2%	46 min	1.82%	A
PSA Airlinesthin sample	145	81.7%	74 min	2.07%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	10	80.0%	67 min	0.00%	B+
American Airlines	949	57.2%	92 min	4.95%	D−

Departure window

When Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 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–8am160 flights91.2%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm57 flights76.4%
2pm–5pm112 flights80.6%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% 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 76.4% on time against 91.2% 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 160 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on DFW to DSM through the year

Jul–Sep 2025126 flights84.9%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights86.7%
Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
Apr–Jun 202697 flights83.2%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 85.2% on time across 330 flights.

Quarter by quarter Envoy on DFW to DSM held fairly steady: 84.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 86.7% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 83.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

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 2,204 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
National Airspace System
30%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
10%

41% 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 2,204 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 2,204 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 91.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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. 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 runs 84.0% on time across 332 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 330 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.

What to do with this

Booking Envoy on DFW to DSM

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 330 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 85.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 324 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures