Route reliability record
MSP→ORD
Minneapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 6,331
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 334 mi
- Carriers
- 8
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 6,331 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 524 at 75.8% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 75.8% on time across 524 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,177 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.23%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Republic
75.8% on time across 524 flights
These figures cover 6,331 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 75.8% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 66.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,426 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 524 | 75.8% | 91 min | 6.11% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,088 | 73.8% | 66 min | 2.85% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 170 | 71.0% | 126 min | 0.59% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 2,399 | 69.9% | 81 min | 1.21% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 668 | 68.0% | 93 min | 3.29% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,426 | 66.7% | 63 min | 1.68% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 54.8% | 79 min | 2.33% | F |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 41.7% | 85 min | 7.69% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 29 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,431 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am1,328 flights80.2%
- 11am–2pm1,103 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm912 flights55.2%
- 5pm–8pm1,256 flights54.5%
- 8pm–5am301 flights65.3%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 83.9% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 50.1% on time, against 80.4% in May. 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.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.3%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 143,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 56,000 minutes out of 143,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 334 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 69.4% on time across 6,330 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.
The sample behind these figures is 6,331 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 80.4% on time and December 50.1%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else.
Common questions
MSP to ORD questions
How often is MSP to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.0% of the 6,331 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 75.8% on time across 524 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 66.7%, a gap of 9 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 54.5%, 29 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 ORD?
December is the weakest month at 50.1% on time, compared with 80.4% in May. Across the year that is 30 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
- ORD to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record75.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.8%
- American Airlines on-time record71.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
Direction matters. MSP to ORD and ORD to MSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.