Carrier route record

DLFSD→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Sioux Falls to Minneapolis

Flights: 366
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 29%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on FSD to MSP 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 9 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 366 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's FSD to MSP record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

124 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.1%

Every carrier on FSD to MSP, 1,256 flights

These figures cover 366 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 FSD to MSP

Delta flew 366 of the 1,256 flights on FSD to MSP, about 29% of it. Its 86.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.5% to SkyWest at 83.1%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on FSD to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	366	86.5%	124 min	0.82%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	890	83.1%	87 min	1.24%	B

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 366 flights.

5am–8am255 flights84.6%
8am–11am107 flights92.4%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 92.4% on time for the 8am–11am window against 84.6% for 5am–8am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 255 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on FSD to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, December worst

December is the weak month at 67.7% on time, against 96.8% in August. 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 32 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 96.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.9%. 19 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 69% of the 6,056 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.

Carrier
69%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
9%
Late-arriving aircraft
1%

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 6,056 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, 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 4,206 of the 6,056 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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

6.1% 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 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 77.1% on time across 366 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 366 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 FSD to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 366 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 86.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 363 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures