Carrier route record

MQDSM→DFW

Envoy Air · Des Moines to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 332
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on DSM to DFW earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 332 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's DSM to DFW record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 325 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.81%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.5%

Every carrier on DSM to DFW, 1,436 flights

These figures cover 332 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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

Envoy against every carrier on DSM to DFW

Envoy flew 332 of the 1,436 flights on DSM to DFW, about 23% of it. Its 84.0% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.0% to American at 67.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DSM to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	332	84.0%	74 min	1.81%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	10	80.0%	78 min	0.00%	B+
PSA Airlinesthin sample	145	75.4%	103 min	4.14%	B−
American Airlines	949	67.9%	105 min	4.95%	C−

Departure window

When Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 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–8am2 flights—
8am–11am160 flights88.1%
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm57 flights74.5%
5pm–8pm112 flights82.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.1% of the time, against 74.5% for the afternoon window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 160 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on DSM to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 2025126 flights80.2%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights88.0%
Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
Apr–Jun 202698 flights84.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.0% on time across 332 flights.

Quarter by quarter Envoy on DSM to DFW held fairly steady: 80.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.0% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 84.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.1%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 3,823 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
62%
Extreme weather
18%
National Airspace System
11%
Carrier
9%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,823 reported delay minutes.

62% 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 3,823 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.5% 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.

The 624 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 85.2% on time across 330 flights, within about 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. 332 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.

What to do with this

Booking Envoy on DSM to DFW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 332 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 84.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 325 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures