Carrier route record

DLIND→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Indianapolis to Minneapolis

Flights: 989
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 79%
Carriers: 2

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

Delta on IND to MSP earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 989 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's IND to MSP record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 982 completed flights

Avg delay

88 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.71%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.1%

Every carrier on IND to MSP, 1,245 flights

These figures cover 989 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 IND to MSP

Delta flew 989 of the 1,245 flights on IND to MSP, most of the route. Its 84.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.8% to SkyWest at 76.3%. 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 IND to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	989	84.8%	88 min	0.71%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	256	76.3%	89 min	1.17%	B

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 18 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 flights90.9%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm201 flights86.4%
2pm–5pm235 flights77.8%
5pm–8pm106 flights73.3%
8pm–5am82 flights89.0%

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 90.9% of the time, against 73.3% for the evening window. That is 18 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 IND to MSP through the year

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

December is the weak month at 67.5% on time, against 94.3% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.7%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 13,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
10%

37% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 13,105 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 5,093 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% 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 503 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.7% on time across 987 flights, 4 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 989 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 IND to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 989 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 84.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 982 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