Route reliability record
MSP→ATW
Minneapolis to Appleton
- Flights
- 979
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 236 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 979 MSP to ATW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to ATW: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.3% of the time and Saturday flights 84.0%, against 77.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 959 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.9% on time across 979 flights
These figures cover 979 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to ATW
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 | 979 | 77.9% | 109 min | 1.63% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to ATW
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis to Appleton
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSP → GRBMinneapolis to Green Bay | SkyWest Airlines | 77.8% | 79.1% | 1.61% | 8pm–5am, Mon (route) | — |
| 2. MSP → ATWMinneapolis to Appleton | SkyWest Airlines | 76.6% | 77.9% | 1.63% | 8pm–5am, Sat | OO 4002 20:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 979 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am306 flights79.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm335 flights74.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am338 flights80.3%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 80.3% on time across 338 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 338 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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 52.5% on time, against 94.6% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.2%. 9 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 76% of the 23,000 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.
- 76%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 22,997 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 76%, 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 17,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.63% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.41%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 236 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.0% on time across 981 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 979 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 ATW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 979 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 77.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 959 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to ATW questions
How often is MSP to ATW delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.1% of the 979 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is MSP to ATW compared with the rest of the country?
77.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to ATW?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 80.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.4%, 6 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 ATW?
December is the weakest month at 52.5% on time, compared with 94.6% in October. Across the year that is 42 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
- ATW to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ORD to ATW, a related route70.0%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.9%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSP to ATW and ATW 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.