Carrier route record
DLMSP→STL
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to St. Louis
- Flights
- 886
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to STL 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 886 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on MSP to STL 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 874 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.5%
Every carrier on MSP to STL, 1,896 flights
These figures cover 886 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
Delta against every carrier on MSP to STL
Delta flew 886 of the 1,896 flights on MSP to STL, about 47% of it. Its 79.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 80.2% to SkyWest at 78.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 651 | 80.2% | 53 min | 0.31% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 886 | 79.5% | 68 min | 1.24% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 359 | 78.2% | 93 min | 1.39% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to STL
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 886 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am183 flights84.1%
- 11am–2pm32 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm307 flights81.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am364 flights75.4%
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 84.1% of the time, against 75.4% for the overnight window. That is 9 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
Delta on MSP to STL through the year
December is the weak month at 62.5% on time, against 92.9% 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. September was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.9%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 12,000 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 7,084 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,204 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.6% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.1% on time across 886 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 886 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on MSP to STL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 886 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 79.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 874 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to STL, every carrier
- Delta on STL to MSP, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MSP to STL80.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to STL78.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- 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
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.