Route reliability record
MSP→BIS
Minneapolis to Bismarck
- Flights
- 1,028
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 386 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,028 MSP to BIS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 628 at 83.2% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to BIS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Thursday flights 84.4%, against 80.7% 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
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,016 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
83.2% on time across 628 flights
These figures cover 1,028 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to BIS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 83.2% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 76.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 400 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 628 | 83.2% | 72 min | 1.11% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 400 | 76.8% | 72 min | 0.50% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Delta by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis to Bismarck
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSP → BISMinneapolis to Bismarck | SkyWest Airlines | 82.3% | 83.2% | 1.11% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 2. MSP → BISMinneapolis to Bismarck | Delta Air Lines | 76.4% | 76.8% | 0.50% | 2pm–5pm, Mon | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am194 flights90.2%
- 11am–2pm149 flights80.7%
- 2pm–5pm172 flights85.4%
- 5pm–8pm264 flights79.0%
- 8pm–5am249 flights71.8%
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 90.2% of the time, against 71.8% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 264 flights scheduled in it.
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. August was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.2%. 8 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 65% of the 14,000 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.
- 65%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,137 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 9,147 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over 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 82.9% on time across 1,028 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. 1,028 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. 1,028 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 80.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,016 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 five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.3% of the 1,028 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to BIS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 83.2% on time across 628 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 76.8%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to BIS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 71.8%, 18 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 BIS83.2%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to BIS76.8%
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- DEN to BIS, a related route76.2%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record76.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.