Route reliability record
MSN→MSP
Madison to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,104
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 228 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 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 1,104 MSN to MSP flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSN to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.0% of the time and Saturday flights 88.1%, against 83.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,089 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.6% on time across 747 flights
These figures cover 1,104 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 MSN to MSP
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 Linesthin sample | 357 | 90.9% | 99 min | 1.12% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 747 | 79.6% | 84 min | 1.07% | B |
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 19 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–8am350 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am168 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm201 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm214 flights81.0%
- 5pm–8pm171 flights78.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 72.2% on time against 91.0% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 350 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
December is the weak month at 68.4% on time, against 89.1% in July. 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 121 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.7%. 8 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 72% of the 16,000 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.
- 72%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
- 2%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 15,805 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 11,000 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.6% 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 228 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 runs 80.8% on time across 1,104 flights, within 3 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 1,104 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. July runs 89.1% on time and December 68.4%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,089 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSN to MSP questions
How often is MSN 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 16.7% of the 1,104 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MSN to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
83.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSN to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 72.2%, 19 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 December delays on MSN to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 68.4% on time, compared with 89.1% in July. Across the year that is 21 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 MSN — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSN to MSP90.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSN to MSP79.6%
- MSN to ORD, a related route71.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- MSN to DCA, a related route75.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.6%
- 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. MSN to MSP and MSP to MSN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.