Route reliability record
MSP→DLH
Minneapolis to Duluth
- Flights
- 1,182
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 144 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,182 MSP to DLH flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to DLH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.7%, against 81.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,155 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.2% on time across 1,178 flights
These figures cover 1,182 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to DLH
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 Linesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,178 | 81.2% | 106 min | 2.29% | B |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,182 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am247 flights84.9%
- 11am–2pm55 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm317 flights76.2%
- 5pm–8pm222 flights81.2%
- 8pm–5am341 flights83.2%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.9% of the time, against 76.2% for the afternoon window. That is 9 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 341 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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 59.0% on time, against 95.8% in October. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.0%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 66% of the 23,000 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 25%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 25% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,947 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 15,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 144 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 82.6% on time across 1,180 flights, within about 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 1,182 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 DLH 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. October runs 95.8% on time and December 59.0%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to DLH questions
How often is MSP to DLH delayed?
About 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 18.7% of the 1,182 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is MSP to DLH compared with the rest of the country?
81.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to DLH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 76.2%, 9 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 DLH?
December is the weakest month at 59.0% on time, compared with 95.8% in October. Across the year that is 37 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
- DLH to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ORD to DLH, a related route64.6%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.2%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MSP to DLH and DLH 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.