Route reliability record
BOS→MSP
Boston to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,851
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,124 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,851 BOS to MSP flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly BOS to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.3% of the time and Friday flights 86.1%, against 83.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,826 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
83.1% on time across 1,851 flights
These figures cover 1,851 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 BOS 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 | 1,851 | 83.1% | 63 min | 1.19% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on BOS 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am480 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am337 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm305 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm362 flights70.6%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.3% of the time, against 70.6% for the evening window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 480 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 69.7% on time, against 94.8% in May. 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 181 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.2%. 7 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 20,000 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 19,518 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 94.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.0% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,124 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 78.1% on time across 1,847 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,851 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 94.8% on time and December 69.7%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,826 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BOS to MSP questions
How often is BOS to MSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.9% of the 1,851 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BOS to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
83.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BOS to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.6%, 24 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 BOS to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 69.7% on time, compared with 94.8% in May. 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 BOS — the return legseparate record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BOS to MSP and MSP to BOS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed BOS 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.