Route reliability record
BDL→MSP
Hartford to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 837
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,050 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 837 BDL to MSP flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly BDL to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.7%, against 82.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 813 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
82.5% on time across 837 flights
These figures cover 837 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to MSP
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 837 | 82.5% | 69 min | 2.51% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on BDL to MSP
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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 837 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights84.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm131 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm186 flights82.1%
- 5pm–8pm156 flights76.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 84.5% on time for the 5am–8am window against 76.9% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BDL to MSP 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 BDL to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 76.9%, a real gap of 7.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.5%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm84.5%
- 2–5pm82.1%
- 5–8pm76.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
December is the weak month at 68.4% on time, against 90.5% in October. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.3%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 9,838 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,589 of the 9,838 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,838 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.51%, against 1.89% 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,050 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 runs 80.8% on time across 838 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. 837 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 MSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 837 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 813 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to MSP questions
How often is BDL to MSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.5% of the 837 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is BDL to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
82.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BDL to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 76.9%, 8 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 December delays on BDL to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 68.4% on time, compared with 90.5% in October. Across the year that is 22 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
- MSP to BDL — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- BDL to ORD, a related route75.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- BDL to ATL, a related route84.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record82.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. BDL to MSP and MSP to BDL 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.