Route reliability record
DFW→SDF
Dallas-Fort Worth to Louisville
- Flights
- 1,992
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 733 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,992 DFW to SDF flights, of which Envoy Air flew 389 at 89.1% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to SDF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.5%, against 71.8% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.1% on time across 389 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,933 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.91%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
89.1% on time across 389 flights
These figures cover 1,992 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SDF
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 89.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 62.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,184 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 389 | 89.1% | 52 min | 1.29% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 389 | 83.1% | 75 min | 4.37% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 82.8% | 51 min | 3.33% | B− |
| American Airlines | 1,184 | 62.1% | 83 min | 2.96% | D |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Louisville
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → SDFDallas-Fort Worth to Louisville | Envoy Air | 88.0% | 89.1% | 1.29% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. DFW → SDFDallas-Fort Worth to Louisville | PSA Airlines | 79.5% | 83.1% | 4.37% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DFW → SDFDallas-Fort Worth to Louisville | American Airlines | 60.3% | 62.1% | 2.96% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 34 points, against 27 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am260 flights81.5%
- 8am–11am425 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm262 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm506 flights68.0%
- 5pm–8pm318 flights58.1%
- 8pm–5am221 flights52.3%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.3% on time, against 86.1% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 506 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to SDF 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 SDF, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 52.3%, a wide gap of 33.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am81.5%
- 8–11am86.1%
- 11am–2pm78.7%
- 2–5pm68.0%
- 5–8pm58.1%
- 8pm–5am52.3%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
December is the weak month at 65.4% on time, against 79.7% in August. 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 196 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.0%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 43,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 43,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 43,399 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 43,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.91%, against 1.89% 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
11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 733 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.0% on time across 1,994 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,992 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 SDF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 1,933 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SDF questions
How often is DFW to SDF delayed?
Roughly 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 28.2% of the 1,992 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to SDF?
Envoy Air leads at 89.1% on time across 389 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 62.1%, a gap of 27 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to SDF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.3%, 34 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 December delays on DFW to SDF?
December is the weakest month at 65.4% on time, compared with 79.7% in August. Across the year that is 14 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
- SDF to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to SDF89.1%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to SDF83.1%
- American Airlines on DFW to SDF62.1%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to SDF, a related route75.8%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record89.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record83.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. DFW to SDF and SDF 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.