Route reliability record
MSP→ABR
Minneapolis to Aberdeen
- Flights
- 754
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 257 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 10 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 754 MSP to ABR flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to ABR: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.9% of the time and Saturday flights 92.1%, against 87.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 741 completed flights
Avg delay
115 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.46%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.6% on time across 754 flights
These figures cover 754 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 MSP to ABR
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 754 | 87.6% | 115 min | 1.46% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to ABR
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 754 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am29 flights—
- 11am–2pm363 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm66 flights93.9%
- 8pm–5am296 flights85.9%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 8 points.
Explore
Filter MSP to ABR 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 MSP to ABR, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 93.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 85.9%, a real gap of 8.0 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm87.1%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm93.9%
- 8pm–5am85.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 67.2% on time, against 96.8% in August. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 77 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.5%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 34%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 34% 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 5.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,572 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,174 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.46% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 257 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 89.6% on time across 754 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 754 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ABR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 754 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 87.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 741 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to ABR questions
How often is MSP to ABR delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.4% of the 754 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is MSP to ABR compared with the rest of the country?
87.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to ABR?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 85.9%, 8 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 MSP to ABR?
December is the weakest month at 67.2% on time, compared with 96.8% in August. Across the year that is 30 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
- ABR to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- MSP to ATL, a related route81.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.6%
- 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. MSP to ABR and ABR to MSP 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.