Route reliability record
MSN→MSP
Madison to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,136
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 228 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,136 MSN to MSP flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSN to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.6% of the time and Saturday flights 91.3%, against 84.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,123 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.06%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.3% on time across 777 flights
These figures cover 1,136 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 359 | 91.8% | 107 min | 1.11% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 777 | 80.3% | 81 min | 1.03% | B |
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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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am350 flights91.6%
- 8am–11am203 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm212 flights74.8%
- 2pm–5pm216 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm155 flights77.8%
- 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 74.8% on time against 91.6% 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.
Explore
Filter MSN to MSP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MSN to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.6% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 74.8%, a wide gap of 16.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.6%
- 8–11am86.1%
- 11am–2pm74.8%
- 2–5pm83.1%
- 5–8pm77.8%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 89.0% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.2%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 76% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 76%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,295 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 76%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.06% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.5% 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 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 81.9% on time across 1,136 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 1,136 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. October runs 89.0% 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. 1,123 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 16.0% of the 1,136 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
84.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 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 91.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 74.8%, 17 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 89.0% in October. 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 MSP91.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSN to MSP80.3%
- MSN to ORD, a related route72.8%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- MSN to DCA, a related route72.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record91.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.