Carrier route record

OHDFW→DSM

PSA Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Des Moines

Flights: 145
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 4

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

PSA on DFW to DSM lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 145 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, PSA's DFW to DSM record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 142 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.07%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

66.5%

Every carrier on DFW to DSM, 1,434 flights

These figures cover 145 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

PSA against every carrier on DFW to DSM

PSA flew 145 of the 1,434 flights on DFW to DSM, about 10% of it. Its 81.7% on time is 15 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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 Airthin sample	330	85.2%	46 min	1.82%	A
PSA Airlines (this page)thin 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 PSA runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 145 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm84 flights77.1%
2pm–5pm33 flights81.8%
5pm–8pm28 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 81.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.

Across the year

PSA on DFW to DSM through the year

Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
Oct–Dec 20257 flights—
Jan–Mar 202675 flights79.2%
Apr–Jun 202642 flights85.7%

Scale runs 70% 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 81.7% on time across 145 flights.

Split by quarter, PSA on DFW to DSM logged 21 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 7 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 75 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 42 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 81.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 1,915 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
8%

47% 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 1,915 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 1,915 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 75.4% on time across 145 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 145 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 PSA on DFW to DSM

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 145 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 81.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 142 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