Carrier route record
DLMSP→SFO
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,449
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 75%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to SFO draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,449 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on MSP to SFO runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 119 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,437 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.8%
Every carrier on MSP to SFO, 1,926 flights
These figures cover 1,449 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSP to SFO
Delta flew 1,449 of the 1,926 flights on MSP to SFO, most of the route. Its 65.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 66.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 74.6% to SkyWest at 60.2%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 356 | 74.6% | 75 min | 0.28% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,449 | 65.4% | 50 min | 0.76% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 121 | 60.2% | 66 min | 0.83% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to SFO
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,449 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am360 flights63.2%
- 11am–2pm360 flights65.7%
- 2pm–5pm187 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm324 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am218 flights63.3%
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 71.7% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 63.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSP to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 38.5% on time, 50 points below September, the best at 88.2%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 59.1%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSP to SFO runs when it is late
The 497 late arrivals split 192 under half an hour, 179 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 126 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early335 flights23.3%
- Within 15 min605 flights42.1%
- 15–29 min late192 flights13.4%
- 30–59 min late179 flights12.5%
- 1–2 hours late98 flights6.8%
- 2+ hours late28 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,437 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
59 of 396 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 160 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 SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSP to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 December 2025, 11 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 December 2025 | 11 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 April 2026 | 5 hours 13 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 5 September 2025 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 July 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 December 2025 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 62% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
62% 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 15,000 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 24,869 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, 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
8.8% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,589 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.6% on time across 1,449 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,449 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 SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 88.2% on time and June 38.5%, a swing of 50 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,437 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to SFO, every carrier
- Delta on SFO to MSP, the return leg
- United Airlines on MSP to SFO74.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to SFO60.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.