Carrier route record

DLMSP→MKE

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Milwaukee

Flights: 622
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 41%
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 MKE lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 622 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSP to MKE record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 614 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.6%

Every carrier on MSP to MKE, 1,522 flights

These figures cover 622 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 MKE

Delta flew 622 of the 1,522 flights on MSP to MKE, about 41% of it. Its 81.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to SkyWest at 79.9%.

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 MKE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	622	81.6%	64 min	0.96%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	900	79.9%	85 min	1.11%	B

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 24 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–8am87 flights88.1%
8am–11am179 flights87.6%
11am–2pm40 flights72.5%
2pm–5pm211 flights80.7%
5pm–8pm33 flights63.6%
8pm–5am72 flights75.0%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 88.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 211 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MSP to MKE through the year

Jul–Sep 2025364 flights82.0%
Oct–Dec 2025127 flights78.2%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026124 flights84.4%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 81.6% on time across 622 flights.

Quarter by quarter Delta on MSP to MKE held fairly steady: 82.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 78.2% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 84.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.1%. 16 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 59% of the 7,276 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
59%
Late-arriving aircraft
31%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, 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 4,277 of the 7,276 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,276 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.1% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.3% 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 about 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 80.9% on time across 623 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 622 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 MKE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 622 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 614 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