Route reliability record
DFW→FSM
Dallas-Fort Worth to Fort Smith
- Flights
- 1,185
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 227 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B−, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,185 DFW to FSM flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to FSM: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.8%, against 83.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,147 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
83.4% on time across 1,185 flights
These figures cover 1,185 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to FSM
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 Air | 1,185 | 83.4% | 60 min | 3.04% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to FSM
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 16 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–11am365 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm34 flights91.2%
- 2pm–5pm332 flights78.6%
- 5pm–8pm99 flights75.5%
- 8pm–5am355 flights85.9%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 75.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
July is the worst month at 74.0% on time, 19 points below February, the best at 92.8%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.5%. 5 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 42% of the 11,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 18%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,414 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.
Cancellations run at 3.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 227 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 84.3% on time across 1,185 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,185 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FSM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,147 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to FSM questions
How often is DFW to FSM delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.6% of the 1,185 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to FSM compared with the rest of the country?
83.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to FSM?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 91.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.5%, 16 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 July delays on DFW to FSM?
July is the weakest month at 74.0% on time, compared with 92.8% in February. Across the year that is 19 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
- FSM to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record83.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to FSM and FSM 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.