Carrier route record

OOBIS→MSP

SkyWest Airlines · Bismarck to Minneapolis

Flights: 628
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 61%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on BIS to MSP lands a B+, 6 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 628 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's BIS to MSP record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 622 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.9%

Every carrier on BIS to MSP, 1,028 flights

These figures cover 628 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

SkyWest against every carrier on BIS to MSP

SkyWest flew 628 of the 1,028 flights on BIS to MSP, most of the route. Its 83.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BIS to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	628	83.6%	88 min	0.96%	B+
Delta Air Lines	400	81.9%	85 min	0.25%	B+

Departure window

When SkyWest 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 628 flights.

5am–8am176 flights87.4%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm328 flights80.0%
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm115 flights87.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% 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 80.0% on time against 87.4% for 5am–8am. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 328 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on BIS to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, December worst

December is the weak month at 57.3% on time, against 97.0% 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 106 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.4%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 8,933 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.

Carrier
67%
Extreme weather
23%
National Airspace System
9%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,933 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, 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 6,025 of the 8,933 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 83.2% on time across 628 flights, within half a point 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. 628 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 SkyWest on BIS to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 628 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 83.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 622 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