Carrier route record
DLIAH→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Houston to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,278
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on IAH to MSP lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 1,278 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.
Key figures
On time
79.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,263 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on IAH to MSP, 1,939 flights
These figures cover 1,278 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on IAH to MSP
Delta flew 1,278 of the 1,939 flights on IAH to MSP, most of the route. Its 79.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.8% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 638 | 79.8% | 51 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,278 | 79.1% | 100 min | 1.10% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 65.2% | 111 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on IAH to MSP
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
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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights88.3%
- 8am–11am146 flights84.2%
- 11am–2pm164 flights78.1%
- 2pm–5pm306 flights73.3%
- 5pm–8pm297 flights71.9%
- 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 88.3% of the time, against 71.9% for the evening window. That is 16 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
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. August was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on IAH to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on IAH to MSP often beats the schedule: 430 of 1,263 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 264 late arrivals split 72 under half an hour, 68 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 124 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early430 flights34.0%
- Within 15 min569 flights45.1%
- 15–29 min late72 flights5.7%
- 30–59 min late68 flights5.4%
- 1–2 hours late61 flights4.8%
- 2+ hours late63 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,263 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
50 of 280 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 34 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on IAH to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 March 2026, 17 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 March 2026 | 17 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 June 2026 | 17 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 March 2026 | 17 hours 7 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 24 November 2025 | 16 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 April 2026 | 14 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 26,480 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg runs 79.7% on time across 1,278 flights, within half 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 1,278 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. 1,263 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to IAH, the return leg
- United Airlines on IAH to MSP79.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.