Carrier route record

DLMSP→ORD

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Chicago

Flights: 1,412
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 8

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

Delta on MSP to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,412 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 532 at 76.1% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 532 flights.

On time

67.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,378 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.9%

Every carrier on MSP to ORD, 6,324 flights

These figures cover 1,412 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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

Delta against every carrier on MSP to ORD

Delta flew 1,412 of the 6,324 flights on MSP to ORD, about 22% of it. Its 67.3% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.1% to Frontier at 41.7%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 704 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MSP to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	532	76.1%	87 min	6.58%	B−
Envoy Air	1,084	74.0%	72 min	2.86%	C
United Airlines	2,398	69.7%	84 min	1.38%	C
SkyWest Airlines	704	67.6%	93 min	3.41%	C−
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,412	67.3%	66 min	1.84%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	138	65.0%	128 min	0.72%	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 6.6% 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.

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on MSP to ORD

DL 154406:5580.7% · 340 flights

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am328 flights81.2%
8am–11am209 flights72.0%
11am–2pm224 flights67.3%
2pm–5pm337 flights53.0%
5pm–8pm143 flights60.4%
8pm–5am171 flights67.5%

Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.2% of the time, against 53.0% for the afternoon window. That is 28 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 337 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MSP to ORD through the year

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

December is the weak month at 40.6% on time, against 80.0% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 169 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 70.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.1%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

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 30,000 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
42%
Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
5%

42% 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 12,000 minutes out of 30,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 29,707 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.

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. 11.6% 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 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 69.0% on time across 1,411 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 1,412 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 Delta on MSP to ORD

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 80.0% on time and December 40.6%, a swing of 39 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,378 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