Carrier route record
AADFW→FSD
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 665
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to FSD earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 665 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to FSD runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 215 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
56.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 643 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.5%
Every carrier on DFW to FSD, 1,086 flights
These figures cover 665 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.4% 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
American against every carrier on DFW to FSD
American flew 665 of the 1,086 flights on DFW to FSD, most of the route. Its 56.1% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.1% to American at 56.1%. 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.
| 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 (this page) | 665 | 56.1% | 91 min | 3.16% | D− |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 37 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–11am218 flights69.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm107 flights58.3%
- 5pm–8pm237 flights52.4%
- 8pm–5am103 flights32.6%
Scale runs 25% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 32.6% on time, against 69.4% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 237 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to FSD through the year
June is the worst month at 43.6% on time, 29 points below April, the best at 72.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 69.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 44.1%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 26,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
56% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 25,575 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 69.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.16%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 20.4% 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 72.1% on time across 664 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 665 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 American on DFW to FSD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.16% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 643 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to FSD, every carrier
- American on FSD to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to FSD86.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to FSD75.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.