Route reliability record
FWA→DFW
Fort Wayne to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,034
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 859 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B−, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,034 FWA to DFW flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 430 at 78.5% on time.
Best time to fly FWA to DFW: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.0%, against 78.4% 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
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 994 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
78.5% on time across 430 flights
These figures cover 1,034 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 FWA to DFW
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 15 | 86.7% | 262 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 430 | 78.5% | 135 min | 5.81% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 589 | 78.1% | 80 min | 1.36% | B |
PSA Airlines cancels 5.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Wayne to Dallas-Fort Worth
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FWA → DFWFort Wayne to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 77.0% | 78.1% | 1.36% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. FWA → DFWFort Wayne to Dallas-Fort Worth | PSA Airlines | 73.9% | 78.5% | 5.81% | 5pm–8pm, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 1,034 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights81.2%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm266 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm44 flights81.4%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights74.1%
- 8pm–5am—
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 2pm–5pm slot at 81.4% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 74.1%. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,034 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 73.6% on time, against 82.0% 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.7%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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. The split is drawn from 22,284 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,061 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.19%, 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. 9.1% 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 859 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 78.3% on time across 1,034 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,034 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 3.19% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 994 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FWA to DFW questions
How often is FWA to DFW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.6% of the 1,034 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FWA to DFW?
PSA Airlines leads at 78.5% on time across 430 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 78.1%, a gap of half a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FWA to DFW?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 81.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.1%, 7 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 FWA to DFW?
December is the weakest month at 73.6% on time, compared with 82.0% in September. Across the year that is 8 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 FWA — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on FWA to DFW78.5%
- Envoy Air on FWA to DFW78.1%
- FWA to ORD, a related route66.2%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- LGA to DFW, a related route70.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record78.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record78.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. FWA to DFW and DFW to FWA 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.