Route reliability record
BZN→MSP
Bozeman to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 805
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 874 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 805 BZN to MSP flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly BZN to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.6% of the time and Thursday flights 93.9%, against 89.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 115 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 799 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
89.1% on time across 805 flights
These figures cover 805 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 BZN 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 | 805 | 89.1% | 90 min | 0.62% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on BZN 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 11 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–8am350 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm174 flights90.2%
- 2pm–5pm281 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.6% of the time, against 82.8% for the afternoon window. That is 11 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 350 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
January is the weak month at 80.9% on time, against 98.4% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.4%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 7,861 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,861 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 3,201 of the 7,861 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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 4.3% 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 874 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 79.8% on time across 805 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. 805 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. 805 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 89.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 799 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BZN to MSP questions
How often is BZN to MSP delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.9% of the 805 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is BZN to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
89.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BZN to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.8%, 11 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 January delays on BZN to MSP?
January is the weakest month at 80.9% on time, compared with 98.4% in May. Across the year that is 18 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 BZN — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- BZN to DEN, a related route76.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- BZN to SEA, a related route84.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. BZN to MSP and MSP to BZN 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.