Carrier route record
DLMIA→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Miami to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 759
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MIA to MSP lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 759 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on MIA 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
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 750 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.0%
Every carrier on MIA to MSP, 1,139 flights
These figures cover 759 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 MIA to MSP
Delta flew 759 of the 1,139 flights on MIA to MSP, most of the route. Its 77.6% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.6% to American at 63.7%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 759 | 77.6% | 75 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 380 | 63.7% | 89 min | 1.05% | D |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MIA to MSP
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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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am143 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm19 flights—
- 2pm–5pm364 flights76.7%
- 5pm–8pm232 flights70.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 70.9% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MIA to MSP through the year
January is the weak month at 59.4% on time, against 89.8% in June. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 71 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.3%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MIA to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on MIA to MSP often beats the schedule: 222 of 750 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 168 late arrivals split 56 under half an hour, 54 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 58 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early222 flights29.6%
- Within 15 min360 flights48.0%
- 15–29 min late56 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late54 flights7.2%
- 1–2 hours late32 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late26 flights3.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 750 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 157 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 46 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at MSP.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MIA to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 December 2025, 15 hours 25 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 3 December 2025 | 15 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 May 2026 | 6 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 July 2026 | 5 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 September 2025 | 5 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 February 2026 | 5 hours 36 minutes | Extreme weather |
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.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. The split is drawn from 12,595 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 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, 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
7.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,501 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 79.5% on time across 760 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 759 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 MIA to MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 759 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 77.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 750 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to MIA, the return leg
- American Airlines on MIA to MSP63.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) 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.