Carrier route record
DLMSP→PDX
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Portland
- Flights
- 1,332
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 84%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to PDX lands a B+, 4 points 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 roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,332 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSP to PDX record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,325 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.7%
Every carrier on MSP to PDX, 1,577 flights
These figures cover 1,332 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Delta against every carrier on MSP to PDX
Delta flew 1,332 of the 1,577 flights on MSP to PDX, most of the route. Its 81.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 83.9% to Delta at 81.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 245 | 83.9% | 65 min | 1.22% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,332 | 81.4% | 51 min | 0.53% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to PDX
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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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am225 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm358 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm321 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm355 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am73 flights71.2%
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 86.5% of the time, against 71.2% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSP to PDX through the year
December is the weak month at 49.5% on time, against 95.3% 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 150 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSP to PDX runs when it is late
Delta on MSP to PDX often beats the schedule: 335 of 1,325 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 247 late arrivals split 117 under half an hour, 61 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 69 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early335 flights25.3%
- Within 15 min743 flights56.1%
- 15–29 min late117 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late61 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late50 flights3.8%
- 2+ hours late19 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,325 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
41 of 198 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. In the other direction, 90 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PDX.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSP to PDX
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 May 2026, 5 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 May 2026 | 5 hours 54 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 21 August 2026 | 4 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 December 2025 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 October 2025 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 June 2026 | 3 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,800 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,668 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.2% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,426 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 91.4% on time across 1,332 flights, 10 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,332 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 PDX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.3% on time and December 49.5%, a swing of 46 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,325 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to PDX, every carrier
- Delta on PDX to MSP, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on MSP to PDX83.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- 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
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.