Carrier route record

DLMSP→MCI

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Kansas City

Flights: 677
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 66%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on MSP to MCI lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 677 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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.

On time

79.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 667 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.33%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.4%

Every carrier on MSP to MCI, 1,028 flights

These figures cover 677 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on MSP to MCI

Delta flew 677 of the 1,028 flights on MSP to MCI, most of the route. Its 79.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.0% to SkyWest at 77.1%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSP to MCI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	677	79.0%	83 min	1.33%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	351	77.1%	78 min	1.71%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on MSP to MCI

DL 165721:3075.5% · 364 flights

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 10 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–8am14 flights—
8am–11am84 flights79.5%
11am–2pm27 flights—
2pm–5pm188 flights85.6%
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am363 flights75.4%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 85.6% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 75.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MSP to MCI through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

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. June was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.3%. 13 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 62% of the 12,000 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.

Carrier
62%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, 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 7,261 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,628 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.8% 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 an hour and a half, 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 85.2% on time across 678 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. 677 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. 677 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 79.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 667 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures