Route reliability record
SEA→MSP
Seattle to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 2,676
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,399 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,676 SEA to MSP flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,745 at 89.0% on time.
Best time to fly SEA to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.6%, against 87.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,648 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
89.0% on time across 1,745 flights
These figures cover 2,676 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 SEA to MSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,745 | 89.0% | 78 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 931 | 83.9% | 45 min | 0.86% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 89.0%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SEA 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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Seattle to Minneapolis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SEA → MSPSeattle to Minneapolis | Delta Air Lines | 88.3% | 89.0% | 0.74% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 943 06:00 |
| 2. SEA → MSPSeattle to Minneapolis | Alaska Airlines | 83.2% | 83.9% | 0.86% | 8am–11am, Wed | AS 555 08:26 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 16 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am366 flights96.4%
- 8am–11am744 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm588 flights85.1%
- 2pm–5pm262 flights84.1%
- 5pm–8pm456 flights80.8%
- 8pm–5am260 flights91.9%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.4% of the time, against 80.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 744 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SEA 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 SEA to MSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 80.8%, a wide gap of 15.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.4%
- 8–11am87.7%
- 11am–2pm85.1%
- 2–5pm84.1%
- 5–8pm80.8%
- 8pm–5am91.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,676 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 81.1% on time, against 92.4% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 290 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.6%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 22,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 21,590 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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 1,399 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 80.9% on time across 2,676 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,676 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 80.8% on time against 96.4% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 16 points is the largest single thing you control here. Delta Air Lines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,648 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to MSP questions
How often is SEA to MSP delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.8% of the 2,676 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to MSP?
Delta Air Lines leads at 89.0% on time across 1,745 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 83.9%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SEA to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.8%, 16 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 December delays on SEA to MSP?
December is the weakest month at 81.1% on time, compared with 92.4% in May. Across the year that is 11 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 SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on SEA to MSP89.0%
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to MSP83.9%
- SEA to LAX, a related route82.0%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- SEA to PHX, a related route78.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record89.0%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record83.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SEA to MSP and MSP to SEA 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.