Route reliability record
MSP→DEN
Minneapolis to Denver
- Flights
- 5,835
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 680 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.4%. Roughly one flight in four arrive 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 5,835 flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 608 at 82.0% on time.
Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 82.0% on time across 608 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,772 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Frontier
82.0% on time across 608 flights
These figures cover 5,835 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 82.0% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 75.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,804 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 245 | 91.2% | 143 min | 2.04% | A |
| Frontier Airlines | 608 | 82.0% | 89 min | 0.99% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,436 | 78.2% | 83 min | 0.84% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,742 | 76.1% | 64 min | 0.52% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,804 | 75.1% | 60 min | 0.89% | B+ |
Frontier leads Delta by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 29 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am951 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am1,104 flights79.9%
- 11am–2pm1,511 flights85.8%
- 2pm–5pm713 flights68.0%
- 5pm–8pm1,112 flights62.5%
- 8pm–5am444 flights66.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.5% on time, against 91.4% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 62.0% on time, against 89.0% in April. 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.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.1%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 91,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 34,000 minutes out of 91,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.80% 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 8.2%. 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 680 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 runs 77.6% on time across 5,835 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.
The sample behind these figures is 5,835 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 89.0% on time and December 62.0%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else.
Common questions
MSP to DEN questions
How often is MSP to DEN delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.5% of the 5,835 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to DEN?
Frontier Airlines leads at 82.0% on time across 608 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 75.1%, a gap of 7 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 DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.5%, 29 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 DEN?
December is the weakest month at 62.0% on time, compared with 89.0% in April. Across the year that is 27 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
- DEN to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.0%
- United Airlines on-time record78.2%
- 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 DEN and DEN to MSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.