Route reliability record
MSP→DFW
Minneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 3,312
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 852 mi
- Carriers
- 4
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 an hour and a half on average. That rests on 3,312 MSP to DFW flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,413 at 79.6% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.7%, against 77.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,215 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.23%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
79.6% on time across 1,413 flights
These figures cover 3,312 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to DFW
The two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,413 | 79.6% | 56 min | 1.49% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,629 | 77.0% | 101 min | 2.89% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 267 | 73.5% | 95 min | 2.25% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 118 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 79.6%, 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 DFW
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 Dallas-Fort Worth
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 → DFWMinneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth | Delta Air Lines | 78.4% | 79.6% | 1.49% | 5am–8am, Mon | DL 2972 06:55 |
| 2. MSP → DFWMinneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 74.8% | 77.0% | 2.89% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1395 06:15 |
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 25 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am744 flights86.6%
- 8am–11am865 flights83.2%
- 11am–2pm230 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm673 flights71.9%
- 5pm–8pm420 flights61.4%
- 8pm–5am380 flights77.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 86.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 865 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to DFW 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 DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.4%, a wide gap of 25.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.6%
- 8–11am83.2%
- 11am–2pm77.1%
- 2–5pm71.9%
- 5–8pm61.4%
- 8pm–5am77.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 65.9% on time, against 85.3% in March. 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 313 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.6%, a spread of 8 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 59,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 59,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 58,840 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 24,000 of the 59,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.69%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 852 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.0% on time across 3,311 flights, 4 points below 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.
The sample behind these figures is 3,312 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 DFW 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. March runs 85.3% on time and December 65.9%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,215 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to DFW questions
How often is MSP to DFW 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 3,312 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to DFW?
Delta Air Lines leads at 79.6% on time across 1,413 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 77.0%, 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 DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.4%, 25 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 DFW?
December is the weakest month at 65.9% on time, compared with 85.3% in March. Across the year that is 19 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
- DFW to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to DFW79.6%
- American Airlines on MSP to DFW77.0%
- Frontier Airlines on MSP to DFW73.5%
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.6%
- American Airlines on-time record77.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.5%
- 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 DFW and DFW 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.