Carrier route record
DLMSP→DEN
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Denver
- Flights
- 1,804
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to DEN lands a B+, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 1,804 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 619 at 80.4% on time.
Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.4% on time across 619 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,781 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on MSP to DEN, 5,838 flights
These figures cover 1,804 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 DEN
Delta flew 1,804 of the 5,838 flights on MSP to DEN, about 31% of it. Its 76.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 91.2% to Southwest at 75.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 | 244 | 91.2% | 143 min | 2.05% | A |
| Frontier Airlines | 619 | 80.4% | 93 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,459 | 78.4% | 80 min | 0.75% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,804 | 76.0% | 59 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,712 | 75.7% | 61 min | 0.53% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 80.4%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to DEN
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 25 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am95 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am365 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm365 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights79.7%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights65.2%
- 8pm–5am255 flights70.8%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.3% of the time, against 65.2% for the evening window. That is 25 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSP to DEN through the year
December is the weak month at 56.0% on time, against 88.9% 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 177 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.3%. 9 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 46% of the 25,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 12,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 25,273 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 8,527 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.2% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.1% on time across 1,805 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,804 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 Delta on MSP to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 88.9% on time and December 56.0%, a swing of 33 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,781 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to DEN, every carrier
- Delta on DEN to MSP, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to DEN91.2%
- Frontier Airlines on MSP to DEN80.4%
- United Airlines on MSP to DEN78.4%
- Southwest Airlines on MSP to DEN75.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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.