Route reliability record
MSP→MIA
Minneapolis to Miami
- Flights
- 1,140
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,501 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,140 MSP to MIA flights, of which American Airlines flew 380 at 90.7% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to MIA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.5%, against 83.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,128 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
90.7% on time across 380 flights
These figures cover 1,140 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to MIA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 90.7% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 79.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 760 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 380 | 90.7% | 120 min | 1.05% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 760 | 79.5% | 50 min | 0.79% | B+ |
American leads Delta by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to MIA
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis to Miami
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSP → MIAMinneapolis to Miami | American Airlines | 89.7% | 90.7% | 1.05% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. MSP → MIAMinneapolis to Miami | Delta Air Lines | 78.9% | 79.5% | 0.79% | 8am–11am, Tue | DL 2129 08:50 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 16 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am385 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am366 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm251 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm16 flights—
- 5pm–8pm121 flights75.0%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
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 74.3% on time against 89.8% for 5am–8am. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 385 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to MIA 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 MIA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.8% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 74.3%, a wide gap of 15.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.8%
- 8–11am85.3%
- 11am–2pm74.3%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm75.0%
- 8pm–5am—
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 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.
December is the weak month at 70.7% on time, against 91.0% 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 104 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,271 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,811 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,033 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 1,501 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.0% on time across 1,139 flights, 10 points below 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,140 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MIA after this flight
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 91.0% on time and December 70.7%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,128 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to MIA questions
How often is MSP to MIA delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.8% of the 1,140 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to MIA?
American Airlines leads at 90.7% on time across 380 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 79.5%, a gap of 11 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to MIA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 74.3%, 16 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 MIA?
December is the weakest month at 70.7% on time, compared with 91.0% 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
- MIA to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- American Airlines on MSP to MIA90.7%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to MIA79.5%
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- ATL to MIA, a related route71.2%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- American Airlines on-time record90.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.5%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MSP to MIA and MIA to MSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.