Carrier route record

DLIND→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Indianapolis to Minneapolis

Flights: 992
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 79%
Carriers: 2

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

Delta on IND to MSP earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 992 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's IND to MSP record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 85 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 986 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.60%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

83.9%

Every carrier on IND to MSP, 1,252 flights

These figures cover 992 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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.

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Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on IND to MSP

Delta flew 992 of the 1,252 flights on IND to MSP, most of the route. Its 85.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.8% to SkyWest at 76.7%. 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)	992	85.8%	85 min	0.60%	A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	260	76.7%	89 min	1.15%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on IND to MSP

DL 275707:0092.9% · 255 flights

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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 flights92.0%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm197 flights85.1%
2pm–5pm235 flights76.1%
5pm–8pm113 flights85.0%
8pm–5am82 flights89.0%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.0% of the time, against 76.1% for the afternoon 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 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. August was the busiest month here, with 117 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.5%, a spread of 8 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on IND to MSP runs when it is late

Delta on IND to MSP often beats the schedule: 466 of 986 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 140 late arrivals split 60 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 47 an hour or more.

15+ min early466 flights47.3%
Within 15 min380 flights38.5%
15–29 min late60 flights6.1%
30–59 min late33 flights3.3%
1–2 hours late24 flights2.4%
2+ hours late23 flights2.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 986 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

19 of 122 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 37 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on IND to MSP

The latest arrival of the period was on 4 September 2025, 15 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Delta on IND to MSP in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
4 September 2025	15 hours 8 minutes	Carrier
29 November 2025	15 hours 1 minute	Extreme weather
4 March 2026	7 hours 1 minute	Carrier
3 November 2025	6 hours 48 minutes	Carrier
4 February 2026	6 hours 37 minutes	Carrier

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 12,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,927 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,968 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, below the national 1.89% 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 990 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. 992 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. 992 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 986 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures