Route reliability record
IAH→MSP
Houston to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,835
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,034 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,835 IAH to MSP flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,272 at 78.9% on time.
Best time to fly IAH to MSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.1%, against 78.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,816 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
78.9% on time across 1,272 flights
These figures cover 1,835 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to MSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,272 | 78.9% | 98 min | 1.02% | B |
| United Airlines | 540 | 78.3% | 55 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 65.2% | 111 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 78.9%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on IAH 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Minneapolis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAH → MSPHouston to Minneapolis | Delta Air Lines | 78.1% | 78.9% | 1.02% | 5am–8am, Tue | DL 1050 06:27 |
| 2. IAH → MSPHouston to Minneapolis | United Airlines | 77.6% | 78.3% | 0.93% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 19 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–8am391 flights88.3%
- 8am–11am311 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm165 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm366 flights72.5%
- 5pm–8pm308 flights71.5%
- 8pm–5am294 flights70.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.7% of the time, against 70.0% for the overnight window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 391 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
December is the weak month at 68.1% on time, against 87.5% in September. 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 180 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.8%. 13 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 44% of the 33,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 33,251 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 15,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.7% 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.
The 1,034 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 runs 80.9% on time across 1,835 flights, within 2 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 1,835 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. September runs 87.5% on time and December 68.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,816 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to MSP questions
How often is IAH to MSP delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.4% of the 1,835 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to MSP?
Delta Air Lines leads at 78.9% on time across 1,272 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 78.3%, a gap of half a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IAH to MSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.0%, 19 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 December delays on IAH to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 68.1% on time, compared with 87.5% in September. Across the year that is 19 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 IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on IAH to MSP78.9%
- United Airlines on IAH to MSP78.3%
- IAH to ORD, a related route74.8%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- IAH to DFW, a related route75.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.9%
- United Airlines on-time record78.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. IAH to MSP and MSP to IAH 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.