Route reliability record
SAF→DFW
Santa Fe to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,758
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 551 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,758 SAF to DFW flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAF to DFW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.8%, against 78.8% 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
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,699 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.0% on time across 1,753 flights
These figures cover 1,758 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 SAF 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,753 | 79.0% | 82 min | 2.97% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 0.0% | 112 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SAF to DFW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Santa Fe to Dallas-Fort Worth
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ABQ → DALAlbuquerque to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 82.2% | 83.5% | 1.52% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. ABQ → DFWAlbuquerque to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 77.2% | 79.9% | 3.38% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 9 17:05 |
| 3. SAF → DFWSanta Fe to Dallas-Fort Worth | SkyWest Airlines | 76.7% | 79.0% | 2.97% | 8am–11am, Tue (route) | OO 6403 06:15 |
| 4. ABQ → DFWAlbuquerque to Dallas-Fort Worth | Envoy Air | 75.6% | 77.3% | 2.15% | 8am–11am, 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 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–8am492 flights82.0%
- 8am–11am400 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm372 flights76.6%
- 2pm–5pm285 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm209 flights67.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.2% of the time, against 67.5% for the evening 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 492 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
June is the worst month at 72.2% on time, 13 points below May, the best at 85.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.7%. 17 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 30,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 29,642 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.96%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
8.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 551 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 76.7% on time across 1,760 flights, within 2 points 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 1,758 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 2.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,699 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAF to DFW questions
How often is SAF 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 21.2% of the 1,758 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SAF to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
78.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAF to DFW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.5%, 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 June delays on SAF to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 72.2% on time, compared with 85.0% in May. Across the year that is 13 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 SAF — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- SAF to DEN, a related route78.5%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- LGA to DFW, a related route70.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record0.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SAF to DFW and DFW to SAF 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.