Route reliability record
FAR→MSP
Fargo to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,305
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 223 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,305 FAR to MSP flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 700 at 87.2% on time.
Best time to fly FAR to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.0%, against 86.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 84 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,297 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
87.2% on time across 700 flights
These figures cover 1,305 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 FAR to MSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 | 700 | 87.2% | 100 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 605 | 84.5% | 63 min | 0.83% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 87.2%, 3 points 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.
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 | 86.8% | 87.2% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Fri | DL 2237 05:00 |
| 2. FAR → MSPFargo to Minneapolis | SkyWest Airlines | 83.8% | 84.5% | 0.83% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | — |
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 12 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am685 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am51 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm344 flights85.1%
- 2pm–5pm120 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm105 flights85.6%
- 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 87.8% of the time, against 75.5% for the morning window. That is 12 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 685 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 96.1% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 83.3%. 5 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 64% of the 15,000 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.
- 64%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,776 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 9,452 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 82.7% on time across 1,305 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,305 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 96.1% on time and January 68.8%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,297 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 seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.0% of the 1,305 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FAR to MSP?
Delta Air Lines leads at 87.2% on time across 700 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 84.5%, a gap of 3 points. 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 87.8% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 75.5%, 12 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 96.1% in May. Across the year that is 27 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 MSP87.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on FAR to MSP84.5%
- FAR to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- FAR to DEN, a related route70.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.5%
- 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. 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.