Route reliability record
DFW→SAF
Dallas-Fort Worth to Santa Fe
- Flights
- 1,760
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 551 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 1,760 DFW to SAF flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to SAF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.0%, against 76.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,703 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
76.8% on time across 1,755 flights
These figures cover 1,760 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 SAF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,755 | 76.8% | 67 min | 2.74% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 121 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to SAF
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Santa Fe
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → ABQDallas-Fort Worth to Albuquerque | Envoy Air | 78.4% | 80.0% | 1.94% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DAL → ABQDallas to Albuquerque | Southwest Airlines | 75.9% | 77.0% | 1.46% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → SAFDallas-Fort Worth to Santa Fe | SkyWest Airlines | 74.7% | 76.8% | 2.74% | 8am–11am, Wed (route) | OO 6405 20:04 |
| 4. DFW → ABQDallas-Fort Worth to Albuquerque | American Airlines | 61.1% | 63.3% | 3.49% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 9 14:59 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 25 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–11am458 flights88.2%
- 11am–2pm414 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights65.7%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights63.7%
- 8pm–5am427 flights72.5%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.7% on time, against 88.2% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 458 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
February is the weak month at 67.3% on time, against 82.3% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.2%. 10 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. Carrier accounts for 44% 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 26%Extreme weather
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 26% 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 4.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,430 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 12,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.73%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
8.2% 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.
The 551 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 runs 78.8% on time across 1,758 flights, within 2 points 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 1,760 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 SAF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 82.3% on time and February 67.3%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of February before you think about anything else. 1,703 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SAF questions
How often is DFW to SAF delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.3% of the 1,760 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to SAF compared with the rest of the country?
76.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to SAF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.7%, 25 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 February delays on DFW to SAF?
February is the weakest month at 67.3% on time, compared with 82.3% in April. Across the year that is 15 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
- SAF to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DEN to SAF, a related route81.7%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record60.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to SAF and SAF 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.