Carrier route record

OOMSP→BIS

SkyWest Airlines · Minneapolis to Bismarck

Flights: 628
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 61%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on MSP to BIS lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 628 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's MSP to BIS record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 620 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.7%

Every carrier on MSP to BIS, 1,028 flights

These figures cover 628 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on MSP to BIS

SkyWest flew 628 of the 1,028 flights on MSP to BIS, most of the route. Its 83.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 83.2% to Delta at 76.8%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSP to BIS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	628	83.2%	72 min	1.11%	B
Delta Air Lines	400	76.8%	72 min	0.50%	B+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against half a point 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–2pm143 flights80.6%
2pm–5pm115 flights88.6%
5pm–8pm35 flights85.7%
8pm–5am141 flights71.2%

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 71.2% for the overnight window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 194 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on MSP to BIS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, December worst

December is the weak month at 61.6% on time, against 97.0% 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. September was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 62% of the 7,526 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.

Carrier
62%
Extreme weather
25%
National Airspace System
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 25% 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 4.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,526 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, 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 4,701 of the 7,526 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.8% 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 83.6% on time across 628 flights, within half a point 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. 628 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 SkyWest on MSP to BIS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 628 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 83.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 620 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures