Carrier route record
DLFAR→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Fargo to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 699
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 57%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 699 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 696 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.43%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
87.2%
Every carrier on FAR to MSP, 1,218 flights
These figures cover 699 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on FAR to MSP
Delta flew 699 of the 1,218 flights on FAR to MSP, most of the route. Its 87.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.4% to SkyWest at 87.0%.
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) | 699 | 87.4% | 111 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 519 | 87.0% | 68 min | 0.77% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on FAR to MSP
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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 699 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 87.4% 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 82.8%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on FAR to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on FAR to MSP often beats the schedule: 299 of 696 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 88 late arrivals split 33 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 34 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early299 flights43.0%
- Within 15 min309 flights44.4%
- 15–29 min late33 flights4.7%
- 30–59 min late21 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late22 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 696 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 73 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 29 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on FAR to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 August 2026, 15 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 August 2026 | 15 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 April 2026 | 8 hours 56 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 23 January 2026 | 8 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 June 2026 | 7 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 April 2026 | 7 hours 4 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 65% of the 9,724 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 65%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 8%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,724 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,342 of the 9,724 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, 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 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 80.0% on time across 699 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. 699 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. 699 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 87.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 696 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 MSP87.0%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.