Carrier route record
DLPHL→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Philadelphia to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,217
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PHL to MSP lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.3 hours on average. That rests on 1,217 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PHL to MSP record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,181 completed flights
Avg delay
137 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.1%
Every carrier on PHL to MSP, 2,086 flights
These figures cover 1,217 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on PHL to MSP
Delta flew 1,217 of the 2,086 flights on PHL to MSP, most of the route. Its 82.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.0% to Republic at 65.0%. Three 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) | 1,217 | 82.0% | 137 min | 2.88% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 618 | 73.9% | 83 min | 7.93% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 147 | 72.2% | 86 min | 1.36% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 65.0% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 84 | 65.0% | 73 min | 4.76% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PHL to MSP
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm310 flights85.4%
- 2pm–5pm215 flights82.5%
- 5pm–8pm327 flights71.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.4% of the time, against 71.9% for the evening window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PHL to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 65.9% on time, against 89.7% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.5%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on PHL to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on PHL to MSP often beats the schedule: 436 of 1,181 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 213 late arrivals split 55 under half an hour, 56 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 102 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early436 flights36.9%
- Within 15 min532 flights45.0%
- 15–29 min late55 flights4.7%
- 30–59 min late56 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late42 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late60 flights5.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,181 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
33 of 201 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 45 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on PHL to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 November 2025, 18 hours 22 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 9 November 2025 | 18 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 August 2026 | 16 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 September 2025 | 16 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 July 2026 | 16 hours 23 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 2 August 2026 | 16 hours 17 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 29,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 29,068 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.88%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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 costs
8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.3 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 981 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 runs 81.3% on time across 1,217 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 1,217 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 PHL to MSP
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.88% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.3 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,181 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to PHL, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on PHL to MSP73.9%
- American Airlines on PHL to MSP72.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- 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.