Route reliability record
FSM→DFW
Fort Smith to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,185
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 227 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 7 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 1,185 FSM to DFW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly FSM to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.9%, against 84.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,143 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
84.3% on time across 1,185 flights
These figures cover 1,185 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 FSM 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 Air | 1,185 | 84.3% | 80 min | 3.12% | B− |
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 18 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 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am321 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm44 flights90.7%
- 2pm–5pm45 flights81.8%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights75.5%
- 8pm–5am53 flights75.5%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 75.5% for the overnight window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 77.7% on time, 14 points below February, the best at 91.5%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.5%. 6 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 48% of the 14,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 14,420 reported delay minutes.
48% 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 14,000 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 run at 3.12%, 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
5.2% 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 227 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 83.4% on time across 1,185 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,185 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 DFW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.12% 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. 1,143 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FSM to DFW questions
How often is FSM to DFW 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 15.7% of the 1,185 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is FSM to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
84.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FSM to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 75.5%, 18 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 FSM to DFW?
July is the weakest month at 77.7% on time, compared with 91.5% in February. Across the year that is 14 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 FSM — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- LGA to DFW, a related route70.8%
- ATL to DFW, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. FSM to DFW and DFW to FSM 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.