Carrier route record
DLDFW→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,411
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DFW to MSP lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,411 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DFW to MSP record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,388 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.9%
Every carrier on DFW to MSP, 3,259 flights
These figures cover 1,411 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 DFW to MSP
Delta flew 1,411 of the 3,259 flights on DFW to MSP, about 43% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to SkyWest at 0.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,411 | 81.6% | 87 min | 1.42% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 229 | 79.5% | 103 min | 1.31% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,616 | 66.2% | 67 min | 3.40% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 30 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DFW 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 15 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–8am365 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am173 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm188 flights82.3%
- 2pm–5pm367 flights78.3%
- 5pm–8pm318 flights74.7%
- 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 89.9% of the time, against 74.7% for the evening window. That is 15 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 367 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DFW to MSP through the year
June is the worst month at 70.5% on time, 16 points below September, the best at 86.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.1%. 12 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 45% of the 22,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
45% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 22,381 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 7,811 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.42% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% 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 852 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 77.9% on time across 1,411 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,411 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 DFW to MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.6% on time and June 70.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,388 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to MSP79.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to MSP66.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.