Carrier route record
DLDEN→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Denver to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,805
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DEN to MSP lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,805 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,457 at 79.9% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on DEN to MSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,787 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on DEN to MSP, 5,848 flights
These figures cover 1,805 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 DEN to MSP
Delta flew 1,805 of the 5,848 flights on DEN to MSP, about 31% of it. Its 81.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.7% to Frontier at 71.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 71.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 618 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 244 | 88.7% | 78 min | 2.46% | A |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,805 | 81.1% | 73 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,457 | 79.9% | 68 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,724 | 72.7% | 50 min | 0.58% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 618 | 71.7% | 62 min | 0.49% | C+ |
United leads Frontier by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DEN to MSP
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 18 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am234 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm282 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm567 flights80.2%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights73.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.2% of the time, against 73.2% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 567 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DEN to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 63.1% on time, against 92.0% in February. 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 177 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.9%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 25,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
53% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 24,542 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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 costs
6.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 680 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 76.0% on time across 1,804 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 1,805 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 DEN to MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 92.0% on time and December 63.1%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,787 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to MSP88.7%
- United Airlines on DEN to MSP79.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MSP72.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to MSP71.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.