Route reliability record
DFW→RAP
Dallas-Fort Worth to Rapid City
- Flights
- 1,005
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 835 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,005 DFW to RAP flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to RAP: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Thursday flights 88.6%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 987 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.59%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.7% on time across 1,002 flights
These figures cover 1,005 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to RAP
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 | 1,002 | 81.7% | 51 min | 1.60% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 26 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,005 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am242 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm200 flights86.1%
- 2pm–5pm206 flights80.7%
- 5pm–8pm72 flights77.9%
- 8pm–5am285 flights77.3%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.1% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 77.3%. 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 285 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to RAP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DFW to RAP, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 86.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 77.3%, a real gap of 8.8 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am85.1%
- 11am–2pm86.1%
- 2–5pm80.7%
- 5–8pm77.9%
- 8pm–5am77.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 75.9%. February is the strongest month at 92.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 17 points. July was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.5%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 9,239 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
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 9,239 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,239 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 835 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 84.5% on time across 1,005 flights, within 3 points 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. 1,005 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 RAP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,005 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. 987 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to RAP questions
How often is DFW to RAP delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.3% of the 1,005 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is DFW to RAP compared with the rest of the country?
81.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 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 RAP?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 77.3%, 9 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 April delays on DFW to RAP?
April is the weakest month at 75.9% on time, compared with 92.9% in February. Across the year that is 17 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
- RAP to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- DEN to RAP, a related route77.7%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.7%
- American Airlines on-time record66.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to RAP and RAP 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.