Route reliability record
MKE→MSP
Milwaukee to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,522
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 297 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,522 MKE to MSP flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 899 at 83.4% on time.
Best time to fly MKE to MSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.3%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,505 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
83.4% on time across 899 flights
These figures cover 1,522 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
Which airline is most reliable on MKE to MSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 899 | 83.4% | 96 min | 1.22% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 623 | 80.9% | 93 min | 0.96% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 83.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Milwaukee to Minneapolis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MKE → MSPMilwaukee to Minneapolis | SkyWest Airlines | 82.4% | 83.4% | 1.22% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 2. MKE → MSPMilwaukee to Minneapolis | Delta Air Lines | 80.1% | 80.9% | 0.96% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am243 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm313 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm317 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm284 flights74.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 74.6% for the evening 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
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
January is the weak month at 69.9% on time, against 92.0% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 175 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.2%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 55% of the 25,000 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.
- 55%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,068 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 14,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.7% 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 297 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.6% on time across 1,522 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,522 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 92.0% on time and January 69.9%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,505 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MKE to MSP questions
How often is MKE to MSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.6% of the 1,522 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MKE to MSP?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 83.4% on time across 899 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 80.9%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MKE to MSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.6%, 16 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are January delays on MKE to MSP?
January is the weakest month at 69.9% on time, compared with 92.0% in May. Across the year that is 22 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to MKE — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on MKE to MSP83.4%
- Delta Air Lines on MKE to MSP80.9%
- MKE to ORD, a related route67.4%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- MKE to DEN, a related route78.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MKE to MSP and MSP to MKE are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MKE to MSP’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.