Route reliability record
BIS→MSP
Bismarck to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 989
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 386 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 989 BIS to MSP flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly BIS to MSP: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.3%, against 84.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 982 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
85.4% on time across 641 flights
These figures cover 989 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BIS 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 641 | 85.4% | 88 min | 0.94% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 348 | 83.6% | 82 min | 0.29% | B+ |
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 989 flights.
- 5am–8am374 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am141 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm283 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm9 flights—
- 5pm–8pm182 flights88.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 81.1% on time against 88.5% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 374 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BIS 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 BIS to MSP, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 88.5% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 81.1%, a real gap of 7.4 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am84.6%
- 8–11am86.5%
- 11am–2pm81.1%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm88.5%
- 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 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. September was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 81.6%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 73% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 73%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,815 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 73%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,292 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.1% 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 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 81.9% on time across 989 flights, within 3 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. 989 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. 989 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 982 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 seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.3% of the 989 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is BIS to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
84.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BIS to MSP?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 81.1%, 7 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 MSP85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on BIS to MSP83.6%
- BIS to DEN, a related route79.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- BIS to DFW, a related route82.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.6%
- 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.
Embed BIS to MSP’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.