Route reliability record
MSP→RDU
Minneapolis to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,230
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 980 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 4 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,230 MSP to RDU flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to RDU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.4%, against 81.4% 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
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,215 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
81.5% on time across 1,227 flights
These figures cover 1,230 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 RDU
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 Lines | 1,227 | 81.5% | 56 min | 1.06% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 50.0% | 20 min | 33.33% | F− |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to RDU
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 14 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–8am327 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am184 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm72 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm283 flights75.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am364 flights76.7%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 75.7% for the afternoon window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
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.
July is the worst month at 64.4% on time, 30 points below October, the best at 94.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.0%. 11 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 51% of the 13,000 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.
- 51%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 6,385 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,569 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.14% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 980 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 84.1% on time across 1,230 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 1,230 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 RDU 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. October runs 94.0% on time and July 64.4%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,215 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to RDU questions
How often is MSP to RDU 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 18.6% of the 1,230 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to RDU compared with the rest of the country?
81.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 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 RDU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.7%, 14 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 July delays on MSP to RDU?
July is the weakest month at 64.4% on time, compared with 94.0% in October. 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
- RDU to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.4%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record50.0%
- 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 RDU and RDU 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.