Route reliability record
CVG→MSP
Cincinnati to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 832
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 596 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 832 CVG to MSP flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly CVG to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Saturday flights 90.7%, against 86.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 92 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 823 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.08%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
86.7% on time across 826 flights
These figures cover 832 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 CVG 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 | 826 | 86.7% | 103 min | 1.09% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 66.7% | 30 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on CVG 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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am349 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm129 flights86.6%
- 2pm–5pm187 flights75.4%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights79.1%
- 8pm–5am49 flights89.8%
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 94.5% of the time, against 75.4% for the afternoon 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 349 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CVG 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 CVG to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.5% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 75.4%, a wide gap of 19.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.5%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm86.6%
- 2–5pm75.4%
- 5–8pm79.1%
- 8pm–5am89.8%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 43 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 56.9% on time, against 100.0% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.7%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 11,236 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,689 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.08% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.6% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 596 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 80.0% on time across 832 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 832 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. 832 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 86.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 823 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CVG to MSP questions
How often is CVG 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 13.5% of the 832 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CVG to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
86.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CVG to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.4%, 19 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 CVG to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 56.9% on time, compared with 100.0% in April. Across the year that is 43 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 CVG — the return legseparate record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- CVG to ORD, a related route70.8%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- CVG to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.7%
- 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. CVG to MSP and MSP to CVG 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.