Route reliability record
FSD→DFW
Sioux Falls to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,085
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 737 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,085 FSD to DFW flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly FSD to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.8%, against 74.2% for the route overall.
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
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,043 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
72.1% on time across 664 flights
These figures cover 1,085 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 FSD to DFW
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 | 296 | 80.8% | 60 min | 2.70% | B |
| American Airlines | 664 | 72.1% | 105 min | 3.31% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 125 | 69.7% | 107 min | 4.80% | C− |
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 16 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–8am363 flights84.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights68.5%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm353 flights69.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 68.5% on time against 84.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 63.7% on time, 29 points below February, the best at 92.7%. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.4%. 15 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 50% of the 26,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Extreme weather
- 17%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,847 reported delay minutes.
50% 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 26,000 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 3.32%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% 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.
The 737 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.5% on time across 1,086 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,085 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 DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,043 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FSD to DFW questions
How often is FSD to DFW 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 25.8% of the 1,085 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is FSD to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
74.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FSD to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 68.5%, 16 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 FSD to DFW?
July is the weakest month at 63.7% on time, compared with 92.7% in February. Across the year that is 29 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
- DFW to FSD — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on FSD to DFW80.8%
- American Airlines on FSD to DFW72.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on FSD to DFW69.7%
- FSD to DEN, a related route78.4%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- FSD to ORD, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.8%
- American Airlines on-time record72.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record69.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. FSD to DFW and DFW to FSD 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.