Carrier route record

WNAUS→MSP

Southwest Airlines · Austin to Minneapolis

Flights: 336
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 20%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on AUS to MSP draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 45 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 336 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on AUS to MSP runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 115 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 336 completed flights

Avg delay

45 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.6%

Every carrier on AUS to MSP, 1,678 flights

These figures cover 336 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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

Southwest against every carrier on AUS to MSP

Southwest flew 336 of the 1,678 flights on AUS to MSP, about 20% of it. Its 66.1% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.6% to Southwest at 66.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on AUS to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	321	84.6%	111 min	0.31%	B+
Delta Air Lines	1,021	77.5%	92 min	1.27%	B
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	336	66.1%	45 min	0.00%	C+

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 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–8am—
8am–11am32 flights90.6%
11am–2pm81 flights65.4%
2pm–5pm167 flights61.7%
5pm–8pm30 flights73.3%
8pm–5am26 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 61.7% for the afternoon window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 167 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on AUS to MSP through the year

Jul–Sep 202584 flights73.8%
Oct–Dec 2025115 flights67.8%
Jan–Mar 202655 flights56.4%
Apr–Jun 202682 flights62.2%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 66.1% on time across 336 flights.

Southwest on AUS to MSP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 73.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 56.4%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 84 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.7%. 27 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 5,105 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
48%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
2%

48% 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 5,105 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 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 5,105 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.6% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.0% 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 about 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,042 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 76.0% on time across 336 flights, 10 points above 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 336 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on AUS to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 336 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 66.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 336 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures