Carrier route record
DLMSP→BWI
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Baltimore
- Flights
- 918
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to BWI lands a B, 4 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 918 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on MSP to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 905 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.8%
Every carrier on MSP to BWI, 1,406 flights
These figures cover 918 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
Delta against every carrier on MSP to BWI
Delta flew 918 of the 1,406 flights on MSP to BWI, most of the route. Its 81.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.3% to Southwest at 79.7%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 918 | 81.3% | 63 min | 1.09% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 488 | 79.7% | 61 min | 1.64% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to BWI
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 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–8am203 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am149 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm203 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights80.0%
- 8pm–5am327 flights78.6%
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 88.5% of the time, against 75.3% for the afternoon window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 327 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSP to BWI through the year
July is the worst month at 65.1% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 90.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.9%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 55% of the 11,000 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.
- 55%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 5,776 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,586 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.2% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 936 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.0% on time across 918 flights, 4 points above 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. 918 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 Delta on MSP to BWI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 918 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 81.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 905 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to BWI, every carrier
- Delta on BWI to MSP, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MSP to BWI79.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- 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
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.