Route reliability record
MSP→MKE
Minneapolis to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 1,522
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 297 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 3 points 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,522 MSP to MKE flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 622 at 81.6% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to MKE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.8%, against 80.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,501 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
81.6% on time across 622 flights
These figures cover 1,522 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to MKE
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 622 | 81.6% | 64 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 900 | 79.9% | 85 min | 1.11% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.6%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis to Milwaukee
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 → MKEMinneapolis to Milwaukee | Delta Air Lines | 80.8% | 81.6% | 0.96% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MSP → MKEMinneapolis to Milwaukee | SkyWest Airlines | 79.0% | 79.9% | 1.11% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 13 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am143 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am334 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm109 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm384 flights77.8%
- 5pm–8pm253 flights73.7%
- 8pm–5am299 flights82.8%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.1% of the time, against 73.7% for the evening window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 384 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 64.6% on time, against 92.5% in May. 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 175 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.1%. 11 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 57% of the 22,000 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.
- 57%Carrier
- 22%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 22% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,411 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 13,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 297 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 runs 82.4% on time across 1,522 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,522 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 MKE 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. May runs 92.5% on time and December 64.6%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,501 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to MKE questions
How often is MSP to MKE 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 19.4% of the 1,522 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to MKE?
Delta Air Lines leads at 81.6% on time across 622 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 79.9%, a gap of 2 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 MKE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.7%, 13 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 MKE?
December is the weakest month at 64.6% on time, compared with 92.5% in May. Across the year that is 28 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
- MKE to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to MKE81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to MKE79.9%
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ORD to MKE, a related route64.1%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
Direction matters. MSP to MKE and MKE 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.