Route reliability record
MSP→BIS
Minneapolis to Bismarck
- Flights
- 989
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 386 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 989 MSP to BIS flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to BIS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.7% of the time and Sunday flights 85.6%, against 81.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 976 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
83.7% on time across 641 flights
These figures cover 989 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 BIS
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 | 641 | 83.7% | 57 min | 1.09% | B |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 348 | 78.4% | 57 min | 0.57% | 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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am196 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm96 flights80.4%
- 2pm–5pm182 flights86.7%
- 5pm–8pm271 flights79.4%
- 8pm–5am244 flights75.1%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.7% of the time, against 75.1% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 271 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to BIS 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 BIS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 89.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 75.1%, a wide gap of 14.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am89.7%
- 11am–2pm80.4%
- 2–5pm86.7%
- 5–8pm79.4%
- 8pm–5am75.1%
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 33 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 64.1% on time, against 96.8% 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.0%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 61% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,054 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,128 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 386 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 84.7% on time across 989 flights, within 3 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. 989 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 BIS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 989 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 976 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to BIS questions
How often is MSP to BIS 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 18.1% of the 989 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to BIS compared with the rest of the country?
81.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points 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 BIS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 75.1%, 15 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 BIS?
December is the weakest month at 64.1% on time, compared with 96.8% in October. Across the year that is 33 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
- BIS to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to BIS83.7%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to BIS78.4%
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- DEN to BIS, a related route76.9%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.4%
- 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 BIS and BIS 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.