Route reliability record
PDX→MSP
Portland to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,577
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,426 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,577 PDX to MSP flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly PDX to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Saturday flights 93.8%, against 91.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 141 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,564 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.57%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
91.4% on time across 1,332 flights
These figures cover 1,577 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to MSP
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,332 | 91.4% | 64 min | 0.68% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 245 | 91.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on PDX 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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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,577 flights.
- 5am–8am441 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am150 flights92.6%
- 11am–2pm384 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm306 flights88.1%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights94.3%
- 8pm–5am261 flights93.4%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 86.5% on time against 95.9% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 441 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PDX 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 PDX to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.9% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 86.5%, a real gap of 9.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.9%
- 8–11am92.6%
- 11am–2pm86.5%
- 2–5pm88.1%
- 5–8pm94.3%
- 8pm–5am93.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 78.2% on time, against 97.3% in October. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 89.5%, a spread of 4 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 7,954 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,954 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 7,954 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,974 of the 7,954 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,426 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.7% on time across 1,577 flights, 10 points below 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,577 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. October runs 97.3% on time and December 78.2%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,564 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to MSP questions
How often is PDX to MSP delayed?
About one flight in twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.6% of the 1,577 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PDX to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
91.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 14 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PDX to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 86.5%, 9 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 PDX to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 78.2% on time, compared with 97.3% in October. Across the year that is 19 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 PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on PDX to MSP91.4%
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to MSP91.0%
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- PDX to LAX, a related route86.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record91.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record91.0%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PDX to MSP and MSP to PDX 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.