Route reliability record
MSP→MSN
Minneapolis to Madison
- Flights
- 1,136
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 228 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 5 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 a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,136 MSP to MSN flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to MSN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Saturday flights 89.3%, against 81.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,125 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.3% on time across 777 flights
These figures cover 1,136 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to MSN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 359 | 83.1% | 65 min | 1.11% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 777 | 81.3% | 72 min | 0.90% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to MSN
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 1,136 flights.
- 5am–8am139 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am241 flights84.1%
- 11am–2pm244 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm162 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am349 flights82.6%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 78.4% on time against 85.6% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 349 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSP to MSN 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 MSN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.6% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 78.4%, a real gap of 7.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.6%
- 8–11am84.1%
- 11am–2pm78.4%
- 2–5pm78.8%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am82.6%
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 37 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 51.8% on time, against 89.2% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 79.9%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 65% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 65%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 8%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,301 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,336 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.1% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 228 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 84.0% on time across 1,136 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 1,136 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 MSN 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 89.2% on time and December 51.8%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,125 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to MSN questions
How often is MSP to MSN 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 18.1% of the 1,136 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to MSN compared with the rest of the country?
81.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points 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 MSN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 78.4%, 7 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 MSN?
December is the weakest month at 51.8% on time, compared with 89.2% in September. Across the year that is 37 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
- MSN to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to MSN83.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to MSN81.3%
- MSP to ORD, a related route70.0%
- ORD to MSN, a related route71.0%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.3%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. MSP to MSN and MSN 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.