Carrier route record
DLPHX→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Phoenix to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 2,073
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PHX to MSP earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 2,073 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PHX to MSP record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,054 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.5%
Every carrier on PHX to MSP, 3,080 flights
These figures cover 2,073 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on PHX to MSP
Delta flew 2,073 of the 3,080 flights on PHX to MSP, most of the route. Its 86.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.2% to Envoy at 50.0%. 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) | 2,073 | 86.2% | 85 min | 0.68% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 74 | 82.2% | 60 min | 1.35% | B |
| American Airlines | 647 | 79.8% | 76 min | 1.08% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 72.7% | 52 min | 1.41% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 90 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PHX 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 13 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–8am358 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am372 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm497 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm264 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm394 flights83.0%
- 8pm–5am188 flights86.3%
Scale runs 75% 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 81.8% on time against 94.7% 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 497 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on PHX to MSP through the year
January is the weak month at 78.8% on time, against 92.7% in April. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 208 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.9%. 7 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 48% of the 24,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 24,262 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 12,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, below the national 1.81% 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 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,276 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 2,074 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,073 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 PHX to MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 92.7% on time and January 78.8%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 2,054 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to MSP79.8%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to MSP72.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) 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 7.04 million flight records
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.