Carrier route record

OOFSD→MSP

SkyWest Airlines · Sioux Falls to Minneapolis

Flights: 890
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 71%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on FSD to MSP lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 890 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's FSD to MSP record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 878 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.24%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.1%

Every carrier on FSD to MSP, 1,256 flights

These figures cover 890 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

SkyWest against every carrier on FSD to MSP

SkyWest flew 890 of the 1,256 flights on FSD to MSP, most of the route. Its 83.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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	366	86.5%	124 min	0.82%	A+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	890	83.1%	87 min	1.24%	B

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am111 flights90.9%
8am–11am74 flights87.7%
11am–2pm401 flights84.5%
2pm–5pm298 flights77.6%
5pm–8pm6 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.9% of the time, against 77.6% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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 401 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on FSD to MSP through the year

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

December is the weak month at 47.3% on time, against 92.0% in October. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.6%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 65% of the 13,000 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
65%
Extreme weather
25%
National Airspace System
10%

Extreme weather accounts for 25% 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 4.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,933 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 8,449 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.3% 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 an hour and a half, 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 5am–8am 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 891 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 890 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 SkyWest on FSD to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 890 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 83.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 878 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