Carrier route record

OOMSP→STL

SkyWest Airlines · Minneapolis to St. Louis

Flights: 359
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on MSP to STL lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 359 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 651 at 80.2% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on MSP to STL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 353 completed flights

Avg delay

93 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.39%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.5%

Every carrier on MSP to STL, 1,896 flights

These figures cover 359 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on MSP to STL

SkyWest flew 359 of the 1,896 flights on MSP to STL, about 19% of it. Its 78.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 80.2% to SkyWest at 78.2%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSP to STL
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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.

Departure window

When SkyWest 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 359 flights.

5am–8am33 flights81.2%
8am–11am106 flights77.9%
11am–2pm209 flights78.3%
2pm–5pm11 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 81.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

SkyWest on MSP to STL through the year

Jul–Sep 202546 flights84.8%
Oct–Dec 202528 flights—
Jan–Mar 2026167 flights75.3%
Apr–Jun 2026118 flights80.5%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 78.2% on time across 359 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on MSP to STL held fairly steady: 84.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 75.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 80.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.4%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 63% of the 7,124 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.

Carrier
63%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
18%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,124 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, 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 4,491 of the 7,124 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

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 75.9% on time across 359 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 359 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 SkyWest on MSP to STL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 359 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 78.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 353 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures