Carrier route record

DLLAS→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Las Vegas to Minneapolis

Flights: 2,012
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 92%
Carriers: 3

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

Delta on LAS to MSP earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 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 2,012 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAS to MSP record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,987 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.99%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.1%

Every carrier on LAS to MSP, 2,193 flights

These figures cover 2,012 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 LAS to MSP

Delta flew 2,012 of the 2,193 flights on LAS to MSP, most of the route. Its 87.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 86.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.9% to Frontier at 50.0%. Two 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 LAS to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	2,012	87.9%	84 min	0.99%	A+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	167	67.7%	65 min	0.00%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	14	50.0%	34 min	0.00%	F+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on LAS to MSP

DL 128206:2094.7% · 365 flights

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 12 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 flights94.7%
8am–11am392 flights92.5%
11am–2pm462 flights84.0%
2pm–5pm295 flights82.5%
5pm–8pm273 flights82.4%
8pm–5am225 flights90.1%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 82.4% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 462 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on LAS to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, January worst

January is the weak month at 81.9% on time, against 94.1% in October. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 198 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 84.5%. 8 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 48% of the 20,000 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
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
1%

42% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 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 20,122 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 9,644 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,299 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 81.1% on time across 2,007 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,012 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 LAS to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 94.1% on time and January 81.9%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,987 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