Route reliability record
DFW→FSD
Dallas-Fort Worth to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 1,086
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 737 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,086 DFW to FSD flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly DFW to FSD: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 75.8%, against 66.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 111 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,050 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
56.1% on time across 665 flights
These figures cover 1,086 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to FSD
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 | 296 | 86.1% | 50 min | 2.70% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 125 | 75.0% | 101 min | 4.00% | B− |
| American Airlines | 665 | 56.1% | 91 min | 3.16% | D− |
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 35 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–8am—
- 8am–11am366 flights73.6%
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm358 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm237 flights52.4%
- 8pm–5am120 flights41.1%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 41.1% on time, against 76.1% for the 2pm–5pm 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 366 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 52.4% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 78.3%. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.8%. 20 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 52% of the 31,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
52% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 30,577 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.13%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.3% 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 737 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 74.2% on time across 1,085 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,086 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FSD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.13% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,050 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to FSD questions
How often is DFW to FSD 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 33.5% of the 1,086 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DFW to FSD compared with the rest of the country?
66.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 FSD?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 76.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 41.1%, 35 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 FSD?
June is the weakest month at 52.4% on time, compared with 78.3% in February. Across the year that is 26 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
- FSD to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to FSD86.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to FSD75.0%
- American Airlines on DFW to FSD56.1%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DEN to FSD, a related route81.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.0%
- American Airlines on-time record56.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to FSD and FSD 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.