Carrier route record
DLMSP→IAH
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Houston
- Flights
- 1,272
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 69%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to IAH 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,272 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 IAH 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 1,249 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.9%
Every carrier on MSP to IAH, 1,835 flights
These figures cover 1,272 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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
Delta against every carrier on MSP to IAH
Delta flew 1,272 of the 1,835 flights on MSP to IAH, most of the route. Its 77.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.4% to SkyWest at 77.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 540 | 88.4% | 61 min | 1.11% | A |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,272 | 77.8% | 60 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 77.3% | 110 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to IAH
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 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–8am330 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am103 flights84.0%
- 11am–2pm202 flights80.3%
- 2pm–5pm273 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm65 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am299 flights72.1%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.3% of the time, against 70.8% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 330 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSP to IAH through the year
December is the weak month at 64.8% on time, against 88.0% in February. 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 117 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.7%. 12 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 49% of the 17,000 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 8,167 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,634 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.86%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,034 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 78.9% on time across 1,272 flights, within about a point 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 1,272 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on MSP to IAH
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 88.0% on time and December 64.8%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,249 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to IAH, every carrier
- Delta on IAH to MSP, the return leg
- United Airlines on MSP to IAH88.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.