Carrier route record

OOMSP→MKE

SkyWest Airlines · Minneapolis to Milwaukee

Flights: 900
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 59%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on MSP to MKE lands a B, 2 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 900 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on MSP to MKE from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 887 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.6%

Every carrier on MSP to MKE, 1,522 flights

These figures cover 900 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on MSP to MKE

SkyWest flew 900 of the 1,522 flights on MSP to MKE, most of the route. Its 79.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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	622	81.6%	64 min	0.96%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	900	79.9%	85 min	1.11%	B

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 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–8am56 flights85.5%
8am–11am155 flights83.1%
11am–2pm69 flights79.7%
2pm–5pm173 flights74.3%
5pm–8pm220 flights75.2%
8pm–5am227 flights85.3%

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

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.5% of the time, against 74.3% for the afternoon window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 227 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on MSP to MKE through the year

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

December is the weak month at 64.0% on time, against 94.8% in October. 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 120 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.4%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 15,000 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
56%
Extreme weather
31%
National Airspace System
13%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 31% 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 4.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,135 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 8,473 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.4% on time across 899 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 900 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 SkyWest on MSP to MKE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 900 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 79.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 887 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