Carrier route record
DLBIS→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Bismarck to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 400
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on BIS to MSP lands a B+, 4 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 400 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BIS to MSP record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 398 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.9%
Every carrier on BIS to MSP, 1,028 flights
These figures cover 400 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
Delta against every carrier on BIS to MSP
Delta flew 400 of the 1,028 flights on BIS to MSP, about 39% of it. Its 81.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 83.6% to Delta at 81.9%.
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 | 628 | 83.6% | 88 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 400 | 81.9% | 85 min | 0.25% | B+ |
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 400 flights.
- 5am–8am222 flights81.9%
- 8am–11am117 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm55 flights80.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 82.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
Delta on BIS to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 58.1% on time, against 96.7% in March. 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 58 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 77.2%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 82% of the 6,125 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.
- 82%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 82%, 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 5,009 of the 6,125 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,125 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.25%, 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 costs
7.0% 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 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.8% on time across 400 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 400 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 Delta on BIS to MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 400 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 398 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.