Route reliability record
TYS→DFW
Knoxville to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 1,761
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 772 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,761 TYS to DFW flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly TYS to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.2%, against 77.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,695 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
76.4% on time across 1,338 flights
These figures cover 1,761 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 | 92 | 87.9% | 56 min | 1.09% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 326 | 78.6% | 84 min | 2.15% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,338 | 76.4% | 103 min | 3.59% | B− |
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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 39 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am529 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am30 flights—
- 11am–2pm392 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm378 flights77.3%
- 5pm–8pm367 flights64.1%
- 8pm–5am65 flights45.9%
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 45.9% on time, against 85.0% 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 529 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TYS to DFW by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On TYS to DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 45.9%, a wide gap of 39.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.0%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm84.3%
- 2–5pm77.3%
- 5–8pm64.1%
- 8pm–5am45.9%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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. August was the busiest month here, with 179 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.6%, a spread of 11 points.
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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 37,493 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 37,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.29%, against 1.89% 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
9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.8% on time across 1,762 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 1,761 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 3.29% 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. 1,695 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TYS to DFW questions
How often is TYS 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 22.5% of the 1,761 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
77.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half 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 TYS to DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 45.9%, 39 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
- PSA Airlines on TYS to DFW78.6%
- American Airlines on TYS to DFW76.4%
- TYS to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- TYS to ATL, a related route87.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record78.6%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.