Route reliability record
SAT→MSP
San Antonio to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 898
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,097 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 898 SAT to MSP flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAT to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Saturday flights 89.0%, against 86.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 884 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
86.0% on time across 898 flights
These figures cover 898 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SAT 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 | 898 | 86.0% | 66 min | 1.22% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on SAT 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm30 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm315 flights78.3%
- 5pm–8pm188 flights85.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% 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 76.7% on time against 93.8% 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAT 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 SAT to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.8% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 76.7%, a wide gap of 17.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.8%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm76.7%
- 2–5pm78.3%
- 5–8pm85.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 95.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.8%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 8,236 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,236 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 8,236 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,866 of the 8,236 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 1,097 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 77.0% on time across 899 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 898 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 898 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 86.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 884 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAT to MSP questions
How often is SAT to MSP delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.0% of the 898 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SAT to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
86.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAT to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 76.7%, 17 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 September delays on SAT to MSP?
September is the weakest month at 81.6% on time, compared with 95.2% in October. Across the year that is 14 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 SAT — the return legseparate record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- SAT to DFW, a related route79.4%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- SAT to DEN, a related route82.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SAT to MSP and MSP to SAT 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.