Carrier route record
DLPHL→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Philadelphia to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,211
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 60%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.2 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,211 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PHL to MSP record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,181 completed flights
Avg delay
130 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on PHL to MSP, 2,023 flights
These figures cover 1,211 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 PHL to MSP
Delta flew 1,211 of the 2,023 flights on PHL to MSP, most of the route. Its 82.4% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.4% to SkyWest 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) | 1,211 | 82.4% | 130 min | 2.31% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 57 | 77.2% | 71 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 522 | 74.4% | 84 min | 7.85% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 213 | 65.6% | 89 min | 1.41% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 65.0% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PHL to MSP
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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm304 flights87.8%
- 2pm–5pm215 flights85.0%
- 5pm–8pm327 flights69.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 87.8% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 69.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. 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 86.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.3%. 9 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. Carrier accounts for 55% of the 27,000 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.
- 55%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 15,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 27,014 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.31% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.2 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 81.9% on time across 1,211 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 1,211 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 89.7% on time and December 65.9%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 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 MSP74.4%
- American Airlines on PHL to MSP65.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.