Route reliability record
ORD→MSP
Chicago to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 6,395
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 334 mi
- Carriers
- 8
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 6,395 ORD to MSP flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,065 at 75.9% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.4% of the time and Saturday flights 74.6%, against 69.9% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 75.9% on time across 1,065 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,214 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.9% on time across 1,065 flights
These figures cover 6,395 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to MSP
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 75.9% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 66.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,424 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,065 | 75.9% | 65 min | 2.82% | B |
| Republic Airways | 526 | 73.6% | 73 min | 7.22% | C− |
| United Airlines | 2,401 | 70.2% | 70 min | 1.29% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 68.3% | 81 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 789 | 67.4% | 96 min | 3.68% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,424 | 66.5% | 94 min | 2.74% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 134 | 57.6% | 119 min | 0.75% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 50.0% | 52 min | 7.69% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 7.2% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to MSP
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Minneapolis
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MDW → MSPChicago to Minneapolis | SkyWest Airlines | 77.4% | 78.6% | 1.54% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | — |
| 2. MDW → MSPChicago to Minneapolis | Southwest Airlines | 74.7% | 76.2% | 1.98% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → MSPChicago to Minneapolis | Envoy Air | 73.8% | 75.9% | 2.82% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 4. ORD → MSPChicago to Minneapolis | United Airlines | 69.3% | 70.2% | 1.29% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2232 07:00 |
| 5. ORD → MSPChicago to Minneapolis | Republic Airways | 68.3% | 73.6% | 7.22% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
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 30 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am743 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am1,297 flights77.7%
- 11am–2pm971 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm1,377 flights68.3%
- 5pm–8pm936 flights56.9%
- 8pm–5am1,071 flights61.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.9% on time, against 86.4% 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 1,377 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to MSP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ORD to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.9%, a wide gap of 29.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.4%
- 8–11am77.7%
- 11am–2pm70.4%
- 2–5pm68.3%
- 5–8pm56.9%
- 8pm–5am61.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
December is the weak month at 50.1% on time, against 78.2% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 593 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.4%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 150,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 150,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 150,043 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.67%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 334 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 70.0% on time across 6,395 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 6,395 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 MSP 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 78.2% on time and December 50.1%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 6,214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to MSP questions
How often is ORD to MSP delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.1% of the 6,395 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to MSP?
Envoy Air leads at 75.9% on time across 1,065 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 66.5%, a gap of 9 points. 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 ORD to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.9%, 30 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 December delays on ORD to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 50.1% on time, compared with 78.2% in May. Across the year that is 28 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
- MSP to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSP75.9%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSP73.6%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSP70.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSP67.4%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to MSP66.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSP57.6%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DEN to MSP, a related route78.5%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record73.6%
- United Airlines on-time record70.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to MSP and MSP to ORD 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.