Route reliability record
MSP→DLH
Minneapolis to Duluth
- Flights
- 1,240
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 144 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 1,240 MSP to DLH flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to DLH: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.2%, against 80.0% 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
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,204 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.0% on time across 1,238 flights
These figures cover 1,240 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 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 | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,238 | 80.0% | 100 min | 2.58% | B |
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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 1,240 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am252 flights80.8%
- 11am–2pm55 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm303 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm284 flights79.6%
- 8pm–5am346 flights83.6%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 83.6% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 74.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 346 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to DLH 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 DLH, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 83.6% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 74.9%, a real gap of 8.7 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am80.8%
- 11am–2pm83.6%
- 2–5pm74.9%
- 5–8pm79.6%
- 8pm–5am83.6%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.9%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 68% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Carrier
- 22%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,199 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 16,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.58%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 82.5% on time across 1,239 flights, within 3 points 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 1,240 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. 1,204 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 20.0% of the 1,240 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
80.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 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 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 83.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.9%, 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 route70.0%
- ORD to DLH, a related route65.3%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.