Route reliability record
TYS→DFW
Knoxville to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,721
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 772 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% 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 1,721 TYS to DFW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly TYS to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.6%, against 76.5% 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
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,645 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
76.0% on time across 1,349 flights
These figures cover 1,721 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 TYS 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 Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 40.00% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 88 | 89.7% | 57 min | 1.14% | A |
| American Airlines | 1,349 | 76.0% | 101 min | 4.15% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 279 | 74.1% | 89 min | 2.51% | C |
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 20 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–8am530 flights82.9%
- 8am–11am35 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm370 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm397 flights76.3%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am30 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.1% on time, against 82.9% 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 530 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 64.7% on time, 20 points below February, 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. June was the busiest month here, with 171 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.8%. 13 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 38,000 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
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
37% 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 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 37,901 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 17,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.83%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 9.7% 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 772 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.6% on time across 1,721 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,721 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 3.83% 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. 1,645 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TYS to DFW questions
How often is TYS to DFW delayed?
About 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 23.5% of the 1,721 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is TYS to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
76.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TYS to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 82.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.1%, 20 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 TYS to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 64.7% on time, compared with 85.0% in February. Across the year that is 20 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 TYS — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- American Airlines on TYS to DFW76.0%
- PSA Airlines on TYS to DFW74.1%
- TYS to ORD, a related route68.2%
- ORD to DFW, a related route69.7%
- TYS to ATL, a related route87.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record89.7%
- American Airlines on-time record76.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. TYS to DFW and DFW to TYS 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.