Route reliability record
SBN→DFW
South Bend to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 984
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 846 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 984 SBN to DFW flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly SBN to DFW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.0%, against 72.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 953 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.6% on time across 845 flights
These figures cover 984 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 SBN 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 | 845 | 73.6% | 104 min | 2.25% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 139 | 63.6% | 111 min | 4.32% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBN 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.
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 984 flights.
- 5am–8am324 flights73.7%
- 8am–11am41 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm258 flights71.6%
- 2pm–5pm116 flights71.1%
- 5pm–8pm245 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 75.0% on time for the 8am–11am window against 70.8% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 324 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
January is the weak month at 65.1% on time, against 83.9% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 66.2%. 14 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. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 28,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Extreme weather
- 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 27,846 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 12,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.4% 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 846 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 74.2% on time across 984 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 984 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: treat all of this as provisional. 984 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 953 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBN to DFW questions
How often is SBN to DFW delayed?
Roughly 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 27.8% of the 984 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is SBN to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
72.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBN to DFW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 75.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.8%, 4 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 January delays on SBN to DFW?
January is the weakest month at 65.1% on time, compared with 83.9% in September. Across the year that is 19 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 SBN — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SBN to DFW73.6%
- PSA Airlines on SBN to DFW63.6%
- SBN to ORD, a related route65.0%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- SBN to CLT, a related route79.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record63.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. SBN to DFW and DFW to SBN 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.