Carrier route record

MQDFW→DSM

Envoy Air · Dallas-Fort Worth to Des Moines

Flights: 297
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 4

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

Envoy on DFW to DSM 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 297 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's DFW to DSM record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 110 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 290 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.02%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

66.4%

Every carrier on DFW to DSM, 1,438 flights

These figures cover 297 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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

Envoy against every carrier on DFW to DSM

Envoy flew 297 of the 1,438 flights on DFW to DSM, about 21% of it. Its 88.3% on time is 22 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 88.3% to American at 56.9%. 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	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−

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am161 flights93.8%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm35 flights81.8%
2pm–5pm100 flights81.2%
5pm–8pm—
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 93.8% of the time, against 81.2% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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 161 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on DFW to DSM through the year

Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights86.7%
Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
Apr–Jun 202697 flights83.2%
Jul–Sep 202663 flights95.2%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 88.3% on time across 297 flights.

Envoy on DFW to DSM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 95.2% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.2%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 74 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.9%, a spread of 8 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Envoy on DFW to DSM runs when it is late

Envoy on DFW to DSM often beats the schedule: 109 of 290 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 34 late arrivals split 13 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.

15+ min early109 flights37.6%
Within 15 min147 flights50.7%
15–29 min late13 flights4.5%
30–59 min late12 flights4.1%
1–2 hours late8 flights2.8%
2+ hours late1 flights0.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 290 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

10 of 39 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Envoy on DFW to DSM

The latest arrival of the period was on 29 April 2026, 2 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Envoy on DFW to DSM in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
29 April 2026	2 hours 13 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
29 July 2026	1 hour 51 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
19 May 2026	1 hour 35 minutes	National Airspace System
13 July 2026	1 hour 33 minutes	Extreme weather
7 March 2026	1 hour 32 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 1,632 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
16%
Carrier
13%

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 1,632 reported delay minutes.

50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,632 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.

Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.

The return leg runs 88.4% on time across 299 flights, within half 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. 297 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. 297 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 88.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 290 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures