Route reliability record
SFO→MSP
San Francisco to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,919
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,589 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,919 SFO to MSP flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to MSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.2% of the time and Saturday flights 87.7%, against 82.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,899 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
83.3% on time across 1,445 flights
These figures cover 1,919 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO 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 | 1,445 | 83.3% | 64 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 301 | 81.0% | 52 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 173 | 77.8% | 64 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO 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.
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 20 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–8am364 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am296 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm427 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm444 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm106 flights82.7%
- 8pm–5am282 flights90.0%
Scale runs 65% 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 73.9% on time against 94.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 444 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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.
June is the worst month at 57.6% on time, 37 points below October, the best at 94.7%. 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 193 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 20,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
52% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 20,496 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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 actually costs
5.0% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,589 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.5% on time across 1,919 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,919 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: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 94.7% on time and June 57.6%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,899 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to MSP questions
How often is SFO to MSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.5% of the 1,919 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SFO to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
82.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to MSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 73.9%, 20 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 June delays on SFO to MSP?
June is the weakest month at 57.6% on time, compared with 94.7% in October. Across the year that is 37 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 SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to MSP83.3%
- United Airlines on SFO to MSP81.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to MSP77.8%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.7%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.3%
- United Airlines on-time record81.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to MSP and MSP to SFO 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.