Carrier route record

DLMSP→FAR

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Fargo

Flights: 700
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 54%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on MSP to FAR lands a B+, 3 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 700 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on MSP to FAR from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 696 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.57%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.7%

Every carrier on MSP to FAR, 1,305 flights

These figures cover 700 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 FAR

Delta flew 700 of the 1,305 flights on MSP to FAR, most of the route. Its 80.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.0% to Delta at 80.7%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSP to FAR
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	605	85.0%	60 min	0.66%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	700	80.7%	78 min	0.57%	B+

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

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 700 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm6 flights—
5pm–8pm353 flights81.1%
8pm–5am341 flights80.0%

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The overnight block holds up unusually well at 80.0% on time across 341 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 353 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MSP to FAR through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 66.1% on time, against 95.0% in September. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.0%. 6 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 45% of the 10,000 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.

Carrier
45%
Extreme weather
28%
Late-arriving aircraft
15%
National Airspace System
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 28% 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 4.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,465 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 4,724 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 223 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.2% on time across 700 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 700 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on MSP to FAR

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 700 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 80.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 696 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures