Carrier route record
DLMSP→FAR
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Fargo
- Flights
- 699
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 57%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. 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 rests on 699 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.
Key figures
On time
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 695 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.57%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.9%
Every carrier on MSP to FAR, 1,218 flights
These figures cover 699 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSP to FAR
Delta flew 699 of the 1,218 flights on MSP to FAR, most of the route. Its 80.0% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.8% to Delta at 80.0%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 519 | 86.8% | 64 min | 0.77% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 699 | 80.0% | 79 min | 0.57% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to FAR
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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 699 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm353 flights79.7%
- 8pm–5am340 flights79.9%
Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 79.9% on time across 340 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
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, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.5%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSP to FAR runs when it is late
Delta on MSP to FAR often beats the schedule: 187 of 695 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 139 late arrivals split 57 under half an hour, 42 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 40 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early187 flights26.9%
- Within 15 min369 flights53.1%
- 15–29 min late57 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late42 flights6.0%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late17 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 695 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
39 of 161 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSP to FAR
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 January 2026, 13 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in January 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 January 2026 | 13 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 January 2026 | 12 hours 59 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 5 January 2026 | 11 hours 15 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 17 February 2026 | 10 hours 18 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 17 February 2026 | 9 hours 1 minute | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 24%Extreme weather
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 24% 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 4.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,033 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,502 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.4% on time across 699 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. 699 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. 699 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 80.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 695 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to FAR, every carrier
- Delta on FAR to MSP, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to FAR86.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.