Carrier route record
DLFAR→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Fargo to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 700
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 54%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on FAR to MSP 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 700 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's FAR to MSP record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 697 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.0%
Every carrier on FAR to MSP, 1,305 flights
These figures cover 700 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 FAR to MSP
Delta flew 700 of the 1,305 flights on FAR to MSP, most of the route. Its 87.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.2% to SkyWest at 84.5%.
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 Lines (this page) | 700 | 87.2% | 100 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 605 | 84.5% | 63 min | 0.83% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on FAR to MSP
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 700 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's FAR to MSP record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 87.2% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on FAR to MSP through the year
January is the weak month at 68.9% on time, against 98.4% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 83.8%. 6 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. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 8,925 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.
- 60%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 8%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 8,925 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 5,362 of the 8,925 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, 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 costs
5.0% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 80.7% on time across 700 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 700 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on FAR to MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 700 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 87.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 697 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FAR to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to FAR, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on FAR to MSP84.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.