Route reliability record
MSP→MCI
Minneapolis to Kansas City
- Flights
- 1,088
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 393 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 2 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 1,088 MSP to MCI flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to MCI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.2%, against 79.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,069 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
80.7% on time across 759 flights
These figures cover 1,088 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to MCI
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 759 | 80.7% | 79 min | 1.45% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 329 | 76.2% | 82 min | 1.82% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to MCI
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,088 flights.
- 5am–8am67 flights83.3%
- 8am–11am221 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm154 flights76.5%
- 2pm–5pm282 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights76.1%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 83.3% on time for the 5am–8am window against 76.1% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to MCI by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MSP to MCI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 76.1%, a real gap of 7.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.3%
- 8–11am82.2%
- 11am–2pm76.5%
- 2–5pm81.7%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am76.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 62.5% on time, against 89.8% in April. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.9%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 71% of the 18,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 71%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,719 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% 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 393 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.5% on time across 1,088 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,088 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,088 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 79.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,069 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to MCI questions
How often is MSP to MCI delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.7% of the 1,088 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to MCI compared with the rest of the country?
79.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 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 MCI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 76.1%, 7 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 MCI?
December is the weakest month at 62.5% on time, compared with 89.8% in April. Across the year that is 27 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
- MCI to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to MCI80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to MCI76.2%
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- DEN to MCI, a related route76.5%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.2%
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSP to MCI and MCI to MSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MSP to MCI’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.