Route reliability record
TUL→DFW
Tulsa to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,848
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 237 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,848 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 820 at 84.1% on time.
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
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,735 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
84.1% on time across 820 flights
These figures cover 2,848 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 TUL to DFW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 84.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 75.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,640 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 820 | 84.1% | 60 min | 3.17% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 212 | 82.0% | 92 min | 2.83% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,640 | 75.0% | 105 min | 3.66% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 176 | 69.5% | 82 min | 6.82% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.7% 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.
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 23 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am944 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am501 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm440 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm332 flights65.3%
- 5pm–8pm417 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am214 flights70.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% on time, against 86.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 944 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 69.9% on time, 15 points below January, the best at 84.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 305 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.6%. 12 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 56,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 56,391 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 56,000 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 3.65%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 9.4% 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.
At 237 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.3% on time across 2,845 flights, 6 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,848 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.65% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 2,735 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUL to DFW questions
How often is TUL to DFW delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.2% of the 2,848 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TUL to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 84.1% on time across 820 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 75.0%, a gap of 9 points. 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 TUL to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.3%, 23 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 TUL to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 69.9% on time, compared with 84.9% in January. Across the year that is 15 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 TUL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record84.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.0%
- American Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. TUL to DFW and DFW to TUL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.