Route reliability record
MSP→LAS
Minneapolis to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 2,188
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,299 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 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 2,188 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,161 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
81.1% on time across 2,007 flights
These figures cover 2,188 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to LAS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 167 | 89.2% | 52 min | 0.60% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,007 | 81.1% | 62 min | 1.05% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 71.4% | 34 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 20 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–8am507 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am412 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm364 flights82.0%
- 2pm–5pm374 flights80.1%
- 5pm–8pm303 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am228 flights78.4%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 69.2% for the evening window. That is 20 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 507 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
January is the weak month at 73.0% on time, against 93.4% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 215 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.6%. 7 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 58% of the 24,000 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 24,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 24,371 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,299 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.1% on time across 2,193 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,188 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 93.4% on time and January 73.0%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 2,161 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to LAS questions
How often is MSP to LAS delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.3% of the 2,188 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to LAS compared with the rest of the country?
81.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.2%, 20 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 January delays on MSP to LAS?
January is the weakest month at 73.0% on time, compared with 93.4% in September. Across the year that is 20 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
- LAS to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on-time record89.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record71.4%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSP to LAS and LAS to MSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.