Carrier route record

DLIAH→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Houston to Minneapolis

Flights: 1,272
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 69%
Carriers: 3

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

Delta on IAH to MSP 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 1,272 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

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

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,258 completed flights

Avg delay

98 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.6%

Every carrier on IAH to MSP, 1,835 flights

These figures cover 1,272 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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

Delta against every carrier on IAH to MSP

Delta flew 1,272 of the 1,835 flights on IAH to MSP, most of the route. Its 78.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.9% to SkyWest at 65.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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 IAH to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	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+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on IAH to MSP

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 17 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 flights87.7%
8am–11am137 flights85.4%
11am–2pm159 flights77.4%
2pm–5pm314 flights74.0%
5pm–8pm297 flights71.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.7% of the time, against 71.2% for the evening window. That is 17 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 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on IAH to MSP through the year

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

December is the weak month at 66.0% on time, against 88.7% 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 117 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.3%. 15 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 45% of the 26,000 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
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
7%
Security
0%

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 26,000 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 26,046 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 12,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

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 77.8% on time across 1,272 flights, within about a point 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 1,272 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.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on IAH to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 88.7% on time and December 66.0%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,258 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