Route reliability record
BOS→MSP
Boston to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,853
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,124 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,853 BOS to MSP flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly BOS to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.9% of the time and Saturday flights 86.1%, against 82.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,825 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
82.0% on time across 1,853 flights
These figures cover 1,853 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
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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 | 1,853 | 82.0% | 70 min | 1.35% | 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.
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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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am472 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am346 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm305 flights83.2%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm362 flights70.5%
- 8pm–5am4 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 92.9% of the time, against 70.5% for the evening window. That is 22 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 472 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BOS to MSP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BOS to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.5%, a wide gap of 22.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.9%
- 8–11am88.6%
- 11am–2pm83.2%
- 2–5pm72.6%
- 5–8pm70.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.8%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. The split is drawn from 23,049 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,489 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% 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 a little over 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.4% on time across 1,849 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,853 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. 1,825 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 18.0% of the 1,853 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is BOS to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
82.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 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 92.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.5%, 22 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 route72.6%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record82.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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.
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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.