Route reliability record
DFW→SWO
Dallas-Fort Worth to Stillwater
- Flights
- 729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 225 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 DFW to SWO flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
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
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 690 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
73.2% on time across 399 flights
These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 SWO
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 Airlinesthin sample | 330 | 81.0% | 82 min | 2.73% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 399 | 73.2% | 102 min | 6.52% | C− |
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–2pm365 flights79.9%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm5 flights—
- 8pm–5am359 flights74.3%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 79.9% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 74.3%. 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 52.5% on time, against 87.7% in September. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.5%. 14 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 15,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,054 reported delay minutes.
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations run at 4.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.6% 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.
At 225 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.4% on time across 729 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
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 SWO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 690 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to SWO questions
How often is DFW to SWO 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 23.2% of the 729 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 SWO compared with the rest of the country?
76.8% 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 SWO?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 79.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 74.3%, 6 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 SWO?
December is the weakest month at 52.5% on time, compared with 87.7% in September. Across the year that is 35 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
- SWO to DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DFW to SWO81.0%
- PSA Airlines on DFW to SWO73.2%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record73.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to SWO and SWO 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.