Route reliability record
BIS→MSP
Bismarck to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,028
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 386 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,028 BIS to MSP flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 628 at 83.6% on time.
Best time to fly BIS to MSP: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.3%, against 82.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,020 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
83.6% on time across 628 flights
These figures cover 1,028 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BIS to MSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 628 | 83.6% | 88 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 400 | 81.9% | 85 min | 0.25% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 83.6%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Bismarck to Minneapolis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BIS → MSPBismarck to Minneapolis | SkyWest Airlines | 82.8% | 83.6% | 0.96% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. BIS → MSPBismarck to Minneapolis | Delta Air Lines | 81.7% | 81.9% | 0.25% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 1,028 flights.
- 5am–8am398 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am117 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm328 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm15 flights—
- 5pm–8pm170 flights84.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 84.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 38 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 57.5% on time, against 95.7% 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 138 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.8%. 11 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 73% of the 15,000 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.
- 73%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,058 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 73%, 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 11,000 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 386 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.7% on time across 1,028 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. 1,028 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. 1,028 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 82.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,020 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BIS to MSP questions
How often is BIS 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 17.1% of the 1,028 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 BIS to MSP?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 83.6% on time across 628 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 81.9%, a gap of 2 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 BIS to MSP?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 84.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 80.0%, 5 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 BIS to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 57.5% on time, compared with 95.7% in October. Across the year that is 38 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 BIS — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on BIS to MSP83.6%
- Delta Air Lines on BIS to MSP81.9%
- BIS to DEN, a related route78.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- BIS to DFW, a related route81.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.9%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. BIS to MSP and MSP to BIS 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.