Route reliability record
DFW→SBN
Dallas-Fort Worth to South Bend
- Flights
- 984
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 846 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 984 DFW to SBN flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to SBN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.3%, against 74.2% 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
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 960 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
74.1% on time across 845 flights
These figures cover 984 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 SBN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 139 | 74.4% | 57 min | 4.32% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 845 | 74.1% | 90 min | 1.78% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to SBN
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–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am258 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm323 flights76.6%
- 2pm–5pm42 flights65.9%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.7% of the time, against 65.9% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 359 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 54.5% on time, against 81.6% in December. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.9%. 11 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 45% of the 21,000 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,283 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 9,518 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
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. 12.1% 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 846 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 72.2% on time across 984 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 984 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 SBN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 984 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 74.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 960 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SBN questions
How often is DFW to SBN 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 25.8% of the 984 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 SBN compared with the rest of the country?
74.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 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 SBN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 65.9%, 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 February delays on DFW to SBN?
February is the weakest month at 54.5% on time, compared with 81.6% in December. Across the year that is 27 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
- SBN to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on DFW to SBN74.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to SBN74.1%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ORD to SBN, a related route62.7%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record74.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.1%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DFW to SBN and SBN 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.