Route reliability record
GEG→MSP
Spokane to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 782
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,175 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 13 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 782 GEG to MSP flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly GEG to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 94.4%, against 90.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 127 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 776 completed flights
Avg delay
117 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
90.3% on time across 782 flights
These figures cover 782 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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
Which airline is most reliable on GEG to MSP
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 | 782 | 90.3% | 117 min | 0.64% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on GEG to MSP
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 782 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm75 flights84.0%
- 2pm–5pm342 flights90.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 84.0% on time against 91.7% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 81.0%. August is the strongest month at 95.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 15 points. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 86.2%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 72% of the 8,776 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.
- 72%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 6,335 of the 8,776 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,776 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
The 1,175 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.6% on time across 782 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. 782 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 782 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 90.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 776 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
GEG to MSP questions
How often is GEG to MSP delayed?
About one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.7% of the 782 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is GEG to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
90.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on GEG to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 84.0%, 8 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 November delays on GEG to MSP?
November is the weakest month at 81.0% on time, compared with 95.8% in August. Across the year that is 15 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 GEG — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- GEG to SEA, a related route85.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- GEG to DEN, a related route83.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.3%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
Direction matters. GEG to MSP and MSP to GEG are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.