Route reliability record
DTW→MSP
Detroit to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,927
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 528 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, about a point 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 1,927 DTW to MSP flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to MSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.8%, against 78.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,913 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
78.5% on time across 1,882 flights
These figures cover 1,927 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Which airline is most reliable on DTW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 86.7% | 131 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,882 | 78.5% | 68 min | 0.64% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW 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 23 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–8am368 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am365 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm384 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm367 flights74.6%
- 5pm–8pm205 flights62.7%
- 8pm–5am238 flights69.2%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.7% on time, against 86.1% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 384 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 65.4% on time, against 89.7% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 195 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.8%. 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 53% of the 28,000 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%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 28,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 28,223 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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 actually costs
7.2% 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 528 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 82.3% on time across 1,932 flights, 4 points above 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 1,927 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 89.7% on time and December 65.4%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,913 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to MSP questions
How often is DTW to MSP delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.3% of the 1,927 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DTW to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
78.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to MSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.7%, 23 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 DTW to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 65.4% on time, compared with 89.7% in May. Across the year that is 24 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 DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record86.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DTW to MSP and MSP to DTW 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.