Route reliability record
MSP→FSD
Minneapolis to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 1,257
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 196 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,257 MSP to FSD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 891 at 77.8% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to FSD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Monday flights 82.0%, against 77.6% 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
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,242 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.8% on time across 891 flights
These figures cover 1,257 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 FSD
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 891 | 77.8% | 75 min | 1.23% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 366 | 77.1% | 69 min | 0.82% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 77.8%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis to Sioux Falls
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 → FSDMinneapolis to Sioux Falls | SkyWest Airlines | 76.8% | 77.8% | 1.23% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
| 2. MSP → FSDMinneapolis to Sioux Falls | Delta Air Lines | 76.5% | 77.1% | 0.82% | 8pm–5am, Wed | — |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am230 flights90.2%
- 11am–2pm240 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm257 flights73.2%
- 5pm–8pm172 flights65.5%
- 8pm–5am358 flights77.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.2% of the time, against 65.5% for the evening window. That is 25 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 358 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 46 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 48.8% on time, against 94.9% 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.3%. 10 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 70% of the 20,000 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.
- 70%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 6%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,381 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 70%, 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 14,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
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. 9.7% 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 196 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.1% on time across 1,256 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,257 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 FSD 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 94.9% on time and December 48.8%, a swing of 46 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,242 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to FSD questions
How often is MSP to FSD delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.4% of the 1,257 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to FSD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 77.8% on time across 891 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 77.1%, a gap of half a point. 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 FSD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.5%, 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 FSD?
December is the weakest month at 48.8% on time, compared with 94.9% in October. Across the year that is 46 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
- FSD to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to FSD77.8%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to FSD77.1%
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- DEN to FSD, a related route81.6%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MSP to FSD and FSD 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.