Carrier route record
DLPDX→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Portland to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,332
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 84%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PDX to MSP 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 1,332 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PDX to MSP 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 1,320 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
91.4%
Every carrier on PDX to MSP, 1,577 flights
These figures cover 1,332 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
Delta against every carrier on PDX to MSP
Delta flew 1,332 of the 1,577 flights on PDX to MSP, most of the route. Its 91.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 91.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 91.4% to Alaska at 91.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,332 | 91.4% | 64 min | 0.68% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 245 | 91.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PDX to MSP
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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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am359 flights97.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm371 flights86.6%
- 2pm–5pm306 flights88.1%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights94.3%
- 8pm–5am261 flights93.4%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 86.6% on time against 97.5% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 371 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PDX to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 76.6% on time, against 96.8% 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 88.9%, a spread of 6 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on PDX to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on PDX to MSP often beats the schedule: 606 of 1,320 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 113 late arrivals split 47 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 28 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early606 flights45.9%
- Within 15 min601 flights45.5%
- 15–29 min late47 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late38 flights2.9%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights1.1%
- 2+ hours late13 flights1.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,320 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 135 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 42 still arrived on time. Only 20 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on PDX to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 June 2026, 10 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 June 2026 | 10 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 November 2025 | 7 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 February 2026 | 4 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 December 2025 | 4 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 August 2026 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 7,271 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,271 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 7,271 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,663 of the 7,271 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.1% 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 81.4% on time across 1,332 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 1,332 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 PDX to MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 96.8% on time and December 76.6%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,320 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to PDX, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to MSP91.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.