Route reliability record
MSP→DEN
Minneapolis to Denver
- Flights
- 5,811
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 680 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 5,811 MSP to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,483 at 78.9% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.7% of the time and Saturday flights 80.7%, against 77.8% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.9% on time across 1,483 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,753 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
78.9% on time across 1,483 flights
These figures cover 5,811 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 DEN
The four carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 227 | 91.0% | 149 min | 2.20% | A |
| United Airlines | 1,483 | 78.9% | 79 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 643 | 78.1% | 112 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,663 | 76.4% | 58 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,795 | 76.3% | 56 min | 1.06% | B |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 78.9%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis to Denver
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 → DENMinneapolis to Denver | United Airlines | 78.5% | 78.9% | 0.54% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 1891 09:05 |
| 2. MSP → DENMinneapolis to Denver | Frontier Airlines | 77.4% | 78.1% | 0.93% | 8am–11am, Sun | F9 1149 06:45 |
| 3. MSP → DENMinneapolis to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 76.1% | 76.4% | 0.42% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
| 4. MSP → DENMinneapolis to Denver | Delta Air Lines | 75.5% | 76.3% | 1.06% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 2849 08:55 |
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 31 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am859 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am1,121 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm1,460 flights85.0%
- 2pm–5pm684 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm1,203 flights61.5%
- 8pm–5am484 flights67.8%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 92.7% 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. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 1,460 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to DEN 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 DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.5%, a wide gap of 31.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.7%
- 8–11am81.8%
- 11am–2pm85.0%
- 2–5pm73.0%
- 5–8pm61.5%
- 8pm–5am67.8%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 553 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.3%, a spread of 5 points.
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 89,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
33% 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 30,000 minutes out of 89,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 89,015 reported delay minutes.
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 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.77%, below the national 1.89% 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
7.8% 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 a little over an hour, 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.
The return leg runs 78.5% on time across 5,828 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 5,811 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
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. 5,753 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to DEN questions
How often is MSP to DEN delayed?
Roughly 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 22.2% of the 5,811 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 78.9% on time across 1,483 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 76.3%, a gap of 3 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 92.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.5%, 31 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 MSP to DEN91.0%
- United Airlines on MSP to DEN78.9%
- Frontier Airlines on MSP to DEN78.1%
- Southwest Airlines on MSP to DEN76.4%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to DEN76.3%
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- MSP to ATL, a related route81.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.0%
- United Airlines on-time record78.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record78.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.
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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.