Carrier route record

DLMCI→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Kansas City to Minneapolis

Flights: 678
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 66%
Carriers: 2

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

Delta on MCI 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 8 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 678 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MCI to MSP record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 667 completed flights

Avg delay

93 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.33%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.3%

Every carrier on MCI to MSP, 1,028 flights

These figures cover 678 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 MCI to MSP

Delta flew 678 of the 1,028 flights on MCI to MSP, most of the route. Its 85.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.2% 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 MCI to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	678	85.2%	93 min	1.33%	A
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	350	76.7%	78 min	1.71%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on MCI to MSP

DL 163506:3091.8% · 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 23 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 flights91.8%
8am–11am68 flights79.4%
11am–2pm30 flights86.7%
2pm–5pm125 flights68.8%
5pm–8pm90 flights85.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.8% of the time, against 68.8% for the afternoon window. That is 23 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 MCI to MSP through the year

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

Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 67.7%. January is the strongest month at 97.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 29 points. June was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.4%. 11 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 52% of the 9,172 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
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 4,811 of the 9,172 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,172 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.7% 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.

At 393 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.0% on time across 677 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 678 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 MCI to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 678 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 85.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 667 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