Route reliability record
FSD→MSP
Sioux Falls to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,455
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 196 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 1,455 FSD to MSP flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 365 at 85.9% on time.
Best time to fly FSD to MSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.6%, against 84.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,438 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
85.9% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,455 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on FSD to MSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 | 365 | 85.9% | 134 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,090 | 83.7% | 96 min | 1.19% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 85.9%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sioux Falls 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. FSD → MSPSioux Falls to Minneapolis | Delta Air Lines | 85.2% | 85.9% | 0.82% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. FSD → MSPSioux Falls to Minneapolis | SkyWest Airlines | 82.7% | 83.7% | 1.19% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 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 1,455 flights.
- 5am–8am366 flights86.8%
- 8am–11am234 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm491 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm361 flights79.3%
- 5pm–8pm3 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.2% of the time, against 79.3% for the afternoon window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 491 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FSD 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 FSD to MSP, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 89.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 79.3%, a real gap of 9.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am86.8%
- 8–11am89.2%
- 11am–2pm84.1%
- 2–5pm79.3%
- 5–8pm—
- 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 35 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 54.7% on time, against 89.7% in April. 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 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.3%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 72% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Carrier
- 19%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 23,669 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 17,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 196 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.8% on time across 1,456 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,455 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. April runs 89.7% on time and December 54.7%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,438 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FSD to MSP questions
How often is FSD to MSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.7% of the 1,455 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FSD to MSP?
Delta Air Lines leads at 85.9% on time across 365 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 83.7%, a gap of 2 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 FSD to MSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 79.3%, 10 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 FSD to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 54.7% on time, compared with 89.7% in April. Across the year that is 35 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 FSD — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on FSD to MSP85.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on FSD to MSP83.7%
- FSD to DEN, a related route80.2%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- FSD to ORD, a related route68.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.7%
- 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. FSD to MSP and MSP to FSD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed FSD to MSP’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.