Route reliability record
MSP→STL
Minneapolis to St. Louis
- Flights
- 1,896
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 448 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 2 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,896 MSP to STL flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 651 at 80.2% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to STL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.4% of the time and Thursday flights 83.4%, against 79.5% 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
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,873 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.2% on time across 651 flights
These figures cover 1,896 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 STL
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 651 | 80.2% | 53 min | 0.31% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 886 | 79.5% | 68 min | 1.24% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 359 | 78.2% | 93 min | 1.39% | B |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 80.2%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to STL
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis to St. Louis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSP → STLMinneapolis to St. Louis | Southwest Airlines | 80.0% | 80.2% | 0.31% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. MSP → STLMinneapolis to St. Louis | Delta Air Lines | 78.5% | 79.5% | 1.24% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 1605 15:15 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 36 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–8am288 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am378 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm262 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm445 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm137 flights58.1%
- 8pm–5am386 flights74.4%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.1% on time, against 94.4% 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. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 445 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 68.1% on time, 21 points below May, the best at 89.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.2%. 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 52% of the 26,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 14,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 26,147 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 448 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 79.8% on time across 1,896 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 1,896 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 STL 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. May runs 89.4% on time and July 68.1%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,873 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to STL questions
How often is MSP to STL 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 20.5% of the 1,896 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to STL?
Southwest Airlines leads at 80.2% on time across 651 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 79.5%, a gap of half a point. 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 STL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.1%, 36 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 STL?
July is the weakest month at 68.1% on time, compared with 89.4% in May. Across the year that is 21 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
- STL to MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on MSP to STL80.2%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to STL79.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to STL78.2%
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ATL to STL, a related route82.4%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.2%
- 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 STL and STL 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.