Route reliability record
GFK→MSP
Grand Forks to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,119
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 284 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,119 GFK to MSP flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.
Best time to fly GFK to MSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.4% of the time and Sunday flights 89.3%, against 86.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,103 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.4% on time across 1,119 flights
These figures cover 1,119 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 17 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 GFK 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,119 | 86.4% | 83 min | 1.43% | A |
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.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am330 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am54 flights94.4%
- 11am–2pm276 flights83.0%
- 2pm–5pm347 flights82.7%
- 5pm–8pm112 flights92.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.4% of the time, against 82.7% for the afternoon window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 347 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter GFK 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 GFK to MSP, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 94.4% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 82.7%, a wide gap of 11.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am89.6%
- 8–11am94.4%
- 11am–2pm83.0%
- 2–5pm82.7%
- 5–8pm92.8%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
January is the weak month at 72.8% on time, against 93.7% in June. 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 115 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 63% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Carrier
- 30%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 30% 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 5.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,494 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,897 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.0% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 284 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 runs 83.8% on time across 1,119 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,119 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. June runs 93.7% on time and January 72.8%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,103 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
GFK to MSP questions
How often is GFK to MSP delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.6% of the 1,119 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is GFK to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
86.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on GFK to MSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 94.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.7%, 12 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 January delays on GFK to MSP?
January is the weakest month at 72.8% on time, compared with 93.7% in June. Across the year that is 21 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 GFK — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- DEN to MSP, a related route78.5%
- ATL to MSP, a related route79.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.4%
- 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. GFK to MSP and MSP to GFK are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed GFK 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.