Route reliability record
CMH→MSP
Columbus to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 871
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 626 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 871 CMH to MSP flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly CMH to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.3% of the time and Thursday flights 88.5%, against 85.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 863 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
85.9% on time across 676 flights
These figures cover 871 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CMH 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 | 676 | 85.9% | 82 min | 0.89% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 195 | 82.5% | 139 min | 0.51% | B+ |
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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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am322 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am68 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm221 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm87 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm148 flights78.8%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.3% of the time, against 78.8% for the evening 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 322 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CMH 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 CMH to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 78.8%, a wide gap of 10.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.3%
- 8–11am86.4%
- 11am–2pm84.1%
- 2–5pm82.8%
- 5–8pm78.8%
- 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 23 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.
February is the weak month at 75.6% on time, against 98.3% in April. 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 113 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 55% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,405 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,813 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.8% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 626 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 80.2% on time across 871 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 871 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. 871 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 85.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 863 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CMH to MSP questions
How often is CMH to MSP delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.8% of the 871 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CMH to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
85.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CMH to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 78.8%, 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 February delays on CMH to MSP?
February is the weakest month at 75.6% on time, compared with 98.3% in April. Across the year that is 23 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 CMH — the return legseparate record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on CMH to MSP85.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on CMH to MSP82.5%
- CMH to ORD, a related route75.4%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- CMH to ATL, a related route84.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. CMH to MSP and MSP to CMH 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.