Route reliability record
BOI→MSP
Boise to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 786
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,142 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 786 BOI to MSP flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly BOI to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.3%, against 87.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 781 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
87.7% on time across 786 flights
These figures cover 786 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 BOI 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 786 | 87.7% | 79 min | 0.64% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on BOI to MSP
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 786 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am62 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm359 flights85.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 90.9% on time for the 5am–8am window against 83.9% for 8am–11am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 72.1% on time, against 96.8% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 84.4%. 6 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 46% of the 7,577 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 3,460 of the 7,577 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,577 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,142 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 786 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 786 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. 786 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 87.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 781 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BOI to MSP questions
How often is BOI to MSP delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.3% of the 786 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is BOI to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
87.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BOI to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.9% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 83.9%, 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 BOI to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 72.1% on time, compared with 96.8% in October. Across the year that is 25 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 BOI — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- BOI to SEA, a related route85.7%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- BOI to DEN, a related route80.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.7%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
Direction matters. BOI to MSP and MSP to BOI 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.