Carrier route record

DLSEA→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Minneapolis

Flights: 1,736
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 65%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SEA to MSP 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,736 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SEA to MSP record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 109 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,719 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.81%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.5%

Every carrier on SEA to MSP, 2,689 flights

These figures cover 1,736 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 SEA to MSP

Delta flew 1,736 of the 2,689 flights on SEA to MSP, most of the route. Its 88.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.5% to Alaska at 80.0%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SEA to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,736	88.5%	66 min	0.81%	A+
Alaska Airlines	953	80.0%	44 min	1.05%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SEA 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 16 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–8am366 flights95.3%
8am–11am346 flights90.4%
11am–2pm398 flights84.1%
2pm–5pm198 flights83.5%
5pm–8pm160 flights79.6%
8pm–5am268 flights92.1%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.3% of the time, against 79.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 398 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SEA to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, August worst

August is the worst month at 81.0% on time, 14 points below September, the best at 95.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 85.0%. 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 54% of the 13,000 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.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 7,021 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,052 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, 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 3.3% 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 1,399 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. 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 82.1% on time across 1,737 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 1,736 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 SEA to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.3% on time and August 81.0%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,719 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures