Carrier route record
DLMSP→MCI
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Kansas City
- Flights
- 759
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 70%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to MCI lands a B, 3 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 759 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on MSP to MCI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 746 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.3%
Every carrier on MSP to MCI, 1,088 flights
These figures cover 759 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSP to MCI
Delta flew 759 of the 1,088 flights on MSP to MCI, most of the route. Its 80.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.7% to SkyWest at 76.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 759 | 80.7% | 79 min | 1.45% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 329 | 76.2% | 82 min | 1.82% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to MCI
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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.
- 5am–8am14 flights—
- 8am–11am139 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm69 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm173 flights87.9%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights76.1%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 73.9% on time against 87.9% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSP to MCI through the year
December is the weak month at 65.5% on time, against 90.8% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSP to MCI runs when it is late
Delta on MSP to MCI often beats the schedule: 188 of 746 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 144 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 46 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 52 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early188 flights25.2%
- Within 15 min414 flights55.5%
- 15–29 min late46 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late46 flights6.2%
- 1–2 hours late32 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late20 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 746 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 140 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 13 made it up before arrival. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSP to MCI
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 November 2025, 12 hours 28 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 November 2025 | 12 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 November 2025 | 11 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 April 2026 | 11 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 April 2026 | 11 hours | Carrier |
| 5 December 2025 | 5 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 69% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 69%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,871 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,394 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.2% on time across 760 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 759 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 Delta on MSP to MCI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 759 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 80.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 746 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to MCI, every carrier
- Delta on MCI to MSP, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to MCI76.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.