Route reliability record
FSM→DFW
Fort Smith to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,194
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,194 FSM to DFW flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly FSM to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Monday flights 88.1%, against 84.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,158 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.68%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
84.9% on time across 1,194 flights
These figures cover 1,194 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 1,194 | 84.9% | 93 min | 2.68% | B |
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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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am363 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am321 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm44 flights90.7%
- 2pm–5pm45 flights81.8%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights76.1%
- 8pm–5am62 flights74.6%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 74.6% for the overnight window. That is 19 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.
Explore
Filter FSM to DFW 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 FSM to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 74.6%, a wide gap of 18.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.3%
- 8–11am86.7%
- 11am–2pm90.7%
- 2–5pm81.8%
- 5–8pm76.1%
- 8pm–5am74.6%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,194 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 80.8%. February is the strongest month at 91.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 11 points. September was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.4%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 16,322 reported delay minutes.
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.68%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, 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 84.3% on time across 1,194 flights, within half 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 1,194 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: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 74.6% on time against 93.3% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 19 points is the largest single thing you control here. Envoy Air is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,158 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 seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.1% of the 1,194 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is FSM to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
84.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 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 74.6%, 19 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 May delays on FSM to DFW?
May is the weakest month at 80.8% on time, compared with 91.5% in February. Across the year that is 11 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 route70.4%
- ATL to DFW, a related route73.9%
- LGA to DFW, a related route70.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.9%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.