Carrier route record
OOBIS→MSP
SkyWest Airlines · Bismarck to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 641
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on BIS to MSP earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 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 641 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's BIS to MSP record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 635 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.7%
Every carrier on BIS to MSP, 989 flights
These figures cover 641 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
SkyWest against every carrier on BIS to MSP
SkyWest flew 641 of the 989 flights on BIS to MSP, most of the route. Its 85.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.4% to Delta at 83.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 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
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 641 flights.
- 5am–8am176 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm283 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm9 flights—
- 5pm–8pm173 flights88.4%
- 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 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 283 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on BIS to MSP through the year
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, Sunday is the strongest day at 89.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 81.1%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on BIS to MSP runs when it is late
SkyWest on BIS to MSP often beats the schedule: 316 of 635 completed flights, 50%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 93 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 42 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early316 flights49.8%
- Within 15 min226 flights35.6%
- 15–29 min late18 flights2.8%
- 30–59 min late33 flights5.2%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights3.9%
- 2+ hours late17 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 635 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 92 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on BIS to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 September 2025, 10 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2025 | 10 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 7 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 December 2025 | 7 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 March 2026 | 6 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 August 2026 | 5 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 70% of the 8,150 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 70%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,150 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 70%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,720 of the 8,150 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.6% 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 83.7% on time across 641 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. 641 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. 641 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 85.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 635 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BIS to MSP, every carrier
- SkyWest on MSP to BIS, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on BIS to MSP83.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.