Carrier route record
DLMSN→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Madison to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 359
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSN to MSP record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.0%
Every carrier on MSN to MSP, 1,136 flights
These figures cover 359 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSN to MSP
Delta flew 359 of the 1,136 flights on MSN to MSP, about 32% of it. Its 91.8% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 91.8% to SkyWest at 80.3%.
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 | 359 | 91.8% | 107 min | 1.11% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 777 | 80.3% | 81 min | 1.03% | B |
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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 359 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 91.8% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on MSN to MSP through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 86.7%. August is the strongest month at 97.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 11 points. August was the busiest month here, with 38 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 98.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.4%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSN to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on MSN to MSP often beats the schedule: 170 of 355 completed flights, 48%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Delta on MSN to MSP is late it tends to be very late: 16 of its 29 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 9 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early170 flights47.9%
- Within 15 min156 flights43.9%
- 15–29 min late5 flights1.4%
- 30–59 min late8 flights2.3%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late9 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 24 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 1 made it up before arrival. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSN to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 April 2026, 5 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 April 2026 | 5 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 October 2025 | 5 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 February 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 April 2026 | 4 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 83% of the 3,090 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 83%Carrier
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 83%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,574 of the 3,090 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,090 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 83.1% on time across 359 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. 359 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. 359 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 91.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 355 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.