Carrier route record
DLMSN→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Madison to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 357
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSN to MSP earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 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 357 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSN to MSP record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 133 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 353 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.3%
Every carrier on MSN to MSP, 1,104 flights
These figures cover 357 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 MSN to MSP
Delta flew 357 of the 1,104 flights on MSN to MSP, about 32% of it. Its 90.9% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 90.9% to SkyWest at 79.6%.
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)thin sample | 357 | 90.9% | 99 min | 1.12% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 747 | 79.6% | 84 min | 1.07% | B |
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 357 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's MSN to MSP record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 90.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on MSN to MSP through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 96.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 36 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 98.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.3%. 14 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 74% of the 3,174 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.
- 74%Carrier
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, 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 2,334 of the 3,174 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,174 reported delay minutes.
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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.2% on time across 357 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 357 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 MSN to MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 357 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 90.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 353 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.