Route reliability record
DFW→STL
Dallas-Fort Worth to St. Louis
- Flights
- 2,392
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 550 mi
- Carriers
- 5
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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,392 DFW to STL flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DFW to STL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.0%, against 69.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 76 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,316 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
66.1% on time across 1,877 flights
These figures cover 2,392 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% 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 STL
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 Airthin sample | 242 | 89.3% | 46 min | 2.89% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 107 | 85.0% | 64 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 52 | 72.5% | 49 min | 1.92% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 72.2% | 57 min | 4.39% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,877 | 66.1% | 84 min | 2.98% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to STL
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to St. Louis
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. DAL → STLDallas to St. Louis | Southwest Airlines | 75.3% | 76.2% | 1.24% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → STLDallas-Fort Worth to St. Louis | American Airlines | 64.1% | 66.1% | 2.98% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1010 21:10 |
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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am341 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am414 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm304 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm501 flights61.3%
- 5pm–8pm419 flights62.5%
- 8pm–5am413 flights63.2%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.7% of the time, against 61.3% for the afternoon window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 501 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW to STL 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 STL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 61.3%, a wide gap of 23.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.7%
- 8–11am75.2%
- 11am–2pm78.2%
- 2–5pm61.3%
- 5–8pm62.5%
- 8pm–5am63.2%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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 52.5% on time, 31 points below February, the best at 83.1%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 240 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.9%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 56,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 56,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 56,436 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.88%, 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
13.4% 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 550 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 76.2% on time across 2,391 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,392 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 STL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.88% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,316 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to STL questions
How often is DFW to STL delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.3% of the 2,392 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to STL compared with the rest of the country?
69.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 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 STL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 61.3%, 23 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 STL?
July is the weakest month at 52.5% on time, compared with 83.1% in February. Across the year that is 31 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
- STL to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to STL89.3%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to STL85.0%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to STL72.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to STL66.1%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- DEN to STL, a related route77.7%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record89.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record85.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to STL and STL 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.