Carrier route record

DLGRR→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Grand Rapids to Minneapolis

Flights: 591
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 48%
Carriers: 2

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

Delta on GRR to MSP lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 591 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on GRR to MSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 583 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.18%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.3%

Every carrier on GRR to MSP, 1,243 flights

These figures cover 591 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

Delta against every carrier on GRR to MSP

Delta flew 591 of the 1,243 flights on GRR to MSP, about 48% of it. Its 80.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.8% to SkyWest at 79.9%.

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 GRR to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	591	80.8%	80 min	1.18%	B
SkyWest Airlines	652	79.9%	80 min	0.92%	B+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on GRR to MSP

DL 291307:0084.7% · 365 flights

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 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–8am365 flights84.7%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm62 flights82.3%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm47 flights59.6%
8pm–5am117 flights76.5%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.6% on time, against 84.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on GRR to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, January worst

January is the weak month at 48.4% on time, against 100.0% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.3%. 10 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 55% of the 9,006 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
55%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 4,925 of the 9,006 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,006 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 408 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 runs 77.9% on time across 591 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 591 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 GRR to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 591 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 80.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 583 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