Route reliability record
MSP→MSN
Minneapolis to Madison
- Flights
- 1,104
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 228 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 1,104 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 89.9% of the time and Saturday flights 85.9%, against 80.8% 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
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,093 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.1% on time across 747 flights
These figures cover 1,104 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
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 | 357 | 82.2% | 60 min | 1.12% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 747 | 80.1% | 76 min | 0.94% | 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.
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am99 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am235 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm244 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm172 flights77.6%
- 5pm–8pm5 flights—
- 8pm–5am349 flights82.0%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 76.8% on time against 89.9% 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.
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. August was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.6%. 9 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 64% 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.
- 64%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 8%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 14,908 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 9,593 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% 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 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 83.3% on time across 1,104 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 1,104 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. 1,093 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 five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.2% of the 1,104 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
80.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 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 89.9% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 76.8%, 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 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 MSN82.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to MSN80.1%
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ORD to MSN, a related route71.4%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record82.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.