Carrier route record

DLCLT→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Charlotte to Minneapolis

Flights: 1,183
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 48%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on CLT 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,183 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's CLT to MSP record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,164 completed flights

Avg delay

95 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.35%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.7%

Every carrier on CLT to MSP, 2,447 flights

These figures cover 1,183 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

Delta against every carrier on CLT to MSP

Delta flew 1,183 of the 2,447 flights on CLT to MSP, about 48% of it. Its 85.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.2% to American at 80.3%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on CLT to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,183	85.2%	95 min	1.35%	A
American Airlines	1,264	80.3%	61 min	1.90%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on CLT to MSP

DL 249106:2094.1% · 364 flights

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 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–8am364 flights94.1%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm348 flights86.9%
2pm–5pm153 flights82.2%
5pm–8pm318 flights75.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.1% of the time, against 75.0% for the evening window. That is 19 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 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on CLT to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 74.7% on time, against 93.5% in September. 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 116 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.5%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 16,000 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.

Carrier
56%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
1%

38% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 16,332 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 9,143 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.4% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 930 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 80.2% on time across 1,183 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 1,183 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.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on CLT to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 93.5% on time and December 74.7%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,164 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures