Route reliability record
DFW→SPS
Dallas-Fort Worth to Wichita Falls
- Flights
- 729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 113 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 DFW to SPS flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to SPS: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.3%, against 83.6% 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 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 700 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
85.9% on time across 481 flights
These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 SPS
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 | 481 | 85.9% | 67 min | 3.95% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 248 | 79.1% | 90 min | 3.63% | B− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Wichita Falls
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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → SPSDallas-Fort Worth to Wichita Falls | Envoy Air | 82.5% | 85.9% | 3.95% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → LAWDallas-Fort Worth to Lawton | PSA Airlines | 68.4% | 72.2% | 5.31% | 8am–11am, Tue (route) | — |
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 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 729 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm360 flights87.4%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm46 flights84.8%
- 8pm–5am318 flights79.0%
Scale runs 70% 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 87.4% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 79.0%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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 63.8% on time, 33 points below February, the best at 96.4%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.2%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 8,860 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 16%National Airspace System
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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,860 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 3,239 of the 8,860 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.84%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
7.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 113 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 83.3% on time across 729 flights, within half a point 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. 729 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 SPS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 700 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SPS questions
How often is DFW to SPS 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 16.4% of the 729 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to SPS compared with the rest of the country?
83.6% 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 SPS?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 87.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 79.0%, 8 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 SPS?
July is the weakest month at 63.8% on time, compared with 96.4% in February. Across the year that is 33 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
- SPS to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to SPS85.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to SPS79.1%
- 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 record85.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to SPS and SPS 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.