Route reliability record
DLH→MSP
Duluth to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,180
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 144 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,180 DLH to MSP flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly DLH to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.7% of the time and Saturday flights 85.3%, against 82.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,152 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
82.5% on time across 1,176 flights
These figures cover 1,180 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DLH 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 Linesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,176 | 82.5% | 109 min | 2.30% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on DLH 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.
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 17 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–8am362 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am225 flights84.9%
- 11am–2pm277 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm286 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm30 flights83.3%
- 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 88.7% of the time, against 72.1% for the afternoon window. That is 17 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 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
January is the weak month at 66.0% on time, against 94.3% in May. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 78.5%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 70% 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.
- 70%Carrier
- 23%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,990 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 70%, 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 15,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 144 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 81.3% on time across 1,182 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,180 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 94.3% on time and January 66.0%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,152 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DLH to MSP questions
How often is DLH to MSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.4% of the 1,180 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is DLH to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
82.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DLH to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.1%, 17 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 January delays on DLH to MSP?
January is the weakest month at 66.0% on time, compared with 94.3% in May. Across the year that is 28 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 DLH — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- DLH to ORD, a related route68.5%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- DEN to MSP, a related route77.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.5%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DLH to MSP and MSP to DLH 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.