Carrier route record
DLFSD→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Sioux Falls to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.2 hours. That rests on 365 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
134 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.3%
Every carrier on FSD to MSP, 1,455 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on FSD to MSP
Delta flew 365 of the 1,455 flights on FSD to MSP, about 25% of it. Its 85.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.9% to SkyWest at 83.7%.
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) | 365 | 85.9% | 134 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,090 | 83.7% | 96 min | 1.19% | B |
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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 365 flights.
- 5am–8am197 flights83.2%
- 8am–11am160 flights89.9%
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 89.9% on time for the 8am–11am window against 83.2% for 5am–8am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 197 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on FSD to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 67.7% on time, against 93.5% 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. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 96.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.4%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on FSD to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on FSD to MSP often beats the schedule: 179 of 362 completed flights, 49%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 51 late arrivals split 13 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early179 flights49.4%
- Within 15 min132 flights36.5%
- 15–29 min late13 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late14 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights2.8%
- 2+ hours late14 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 44 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on FSD to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 December 2025, 16 hours 32 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 8 December 2025 | 16 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 August 2026 | 12 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 October 2025 | 9 hours 37 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 25 May 2026 | 6 hours 40 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 September 2025 | 6 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 73% of the 6,851 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 73%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 6,851 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 73%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,991 of the 6,851 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
6.6% 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 about 2.2 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 78.2% on time across 365 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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. 365 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 85.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 362 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FSD to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to FSD, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on FSD to MSP83.7%
- 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.