Carrier route record
OOMSP→FSD
SkyWest Airlines · Minneapolis to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 891
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 71%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on MSP to FSD lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 891 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on MSP to FSD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 879 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on MSP to FSD, 1,257 flights
These figures cover 891 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on MSP to FSD
SkyWest flew 891 of the 1,257 flights on MSP to FSD, most of the route. Its 77.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 77.8% to Delta at 77.1%.
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 (this page) | 891 | 77.8% | 75 min | 1.23% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 366 | 77.1% | 69 min | 0.82% | B+ |
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
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–5pm256 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm165 flights65.2%
- 8pm–5am—
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 65.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 256 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on MSP to FSD through the year
December is the weak month at 50.9% on time, against 96.6% 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.2%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 74% of the 15,000 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.
- 74%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,658 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, 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 11,000 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% 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 83.1% on time across 890 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 891 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 SkyWest on MSP to FSD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 891 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 77.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 879 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to FSD, every carrier
- SkyWest on FSD to MSP, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to FSD77.1%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.