Route reliability record
FAR→MSP
Fargo to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,218
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 223 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,218 FAR to MSP flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 699 at 87.4% on time.
Best time to fly FAR to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.7%, against 87.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,211 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.57%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
87.4% on time across 699 flights
These figures cover 1,218 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 FAR to MSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 699 | 87.4% | 111 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 519 | 87.0% | 68 min | 0.77% | A+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 87.4%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on FAR 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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fargo to Minneapolis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FAR → MSPFargo to Minneapolis | Delta Air Lines | 87.0% | 87.4% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Fri | DL 2237 05:00 |
| 2. FAR → MSPFargo to Minneapolis | SkyWest Airlines | 86.3% | 87.0% | 0.77% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am684 flights88.0%
- 8am–11am51 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm355 flights87.6%
- 2pm–5pm61 flights86.7%
- 5pm–8pm67 flights86.6%
- 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 88.0% of the time, against 75.5% for the morning window. That is 13 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 684 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FAR 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 FAR to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.0% on time and the worst is 8am–11am at 75.5%, a wide gap of 12.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.0%
- 8–11am75.5%
- 11am–2pm87.6%
- 2–5pm86.7%
- 5–8pm86.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 68.8% on time, against 96.7% in July. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 131 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.7% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 84.9%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 66% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 5%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,306 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,505 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 223 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.9% on time across 1,218 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 1,218 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. July runs 96.7% on time and January 68.8%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,211 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAR to MSP questions
How often is FAR to MSP delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.8% of the 1,218 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FAR to MSP?
Delta Air Lines leads at 87.4% on time across 699 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 87.0%, a gap of half a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FAR to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.0% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 75.5%, 13 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 FAR to MSP?
January is the weakest month at 68.8% on time, compared with 96.7% in July. 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 FAR — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on FAR to MSP87.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on FAR to MSP87.0%
- FAR to ORD, a related route73.0%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- FAR to DEN, a related route72.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. FAR to MSP and MSP to FAR 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.