Carrier route record
DLORD→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Chicago to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,411
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ORD to MSP sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,411 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,084 at 74.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 74.2% on time across 1,084 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,380 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on ORD to MSP, 6,324 flights
These figures cover 1,411 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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
Delta against every carrier on ORD to MSP
Delta flew 1,411 of the 6,324 flights on ORD to MSP, about 22% of it. Its 69.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 74.2% to Frontier at 50.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 74.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 702 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,084 | 74.2% | 66 min | 2.77% | C |
| Republic Airways | 533 | 72.0% | 75 min | 6.19% | C− |
| United Airlines | 2,401 | 69.5% | 70 min | 1.04% | C |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,411 | 69.0% | 96 min | 1.98% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 68.3% | 81 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 702 | 67.1% | 99 min | 3.42% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 137 | 51.1% | 118 min | 0.73% | F+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 50.0% | 52 min | 7.69% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.2% 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.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am196 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am352 flights75.3%
- 11am–2pm188 flights69.2%
- 2pm–5pm222 flights63.1%
- 5pm–8pm336 flights55.7%
- 8pm–5am117 flights67.3%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 87.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ORD to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 45.9% on time, against 76.4% 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 169 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 74.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.6%. 12 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 41,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 40,998 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 87.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
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. 13.6% 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 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 67.3% on time across 1,412 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,411 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 ORD to MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 76.4% on time and December 45.9%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,380 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSP74.2%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSP72.0%
- United Airlines on ORD to MSP69.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSP67.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSP51.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.