Route reliability record
MSP→MOT
Minneapolis to Minot
- Flights
- 1,347
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 449 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 1,347 MSP to MOT flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to MOT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.0%, against 78.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,313 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.5% on time across 1,347 flights
These figures cover 1,347 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to MOT
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,347 | 78.5% | 93 min | 1.93% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to MOT
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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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,347 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am338 flights84.1%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm364 flights77.2%
- 5pm–8pm313 flights77.9%
- 8pm–5am331 flights74.9%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.1% of the time, against 74.9% for the overnight window. That is 9 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to MOT 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 MOT, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 84.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 74.9%, a real gap of 9.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm77.2%
- 5–8pm77.9%
- 8pm–5am74.9%
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 43 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 51.4% on time, against 94.1% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.6%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 76% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 76%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,097 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 76%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 20,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.59%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 449 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 81.4% on time across 1,346 flights, within 3 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 1,347 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 MOT 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. October runs 94.1% on time and December 51.4%, a swing of 43 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,313 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to MOT questions
How often is MSP to MOT 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 21.5% of the 1,347 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MSP to MOT compared with the rest of the country?
78.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to MOT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 74.9%, 9 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 MOT?
December is the weakest month at 51.4% on time, compared with 94.1% in October. Across the year that is 43 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
- MOT to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- DEN to MOT, a related route75.6%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSP to MOT and MOT 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.