Route reliability record
SLC→MSP
Salt Lake City to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,609
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 991 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 1,609 SLC to MSP flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to MSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.1%, against 86.4% 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 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,602 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
86.4% on time across 1,609 flights
These figures cover 1,609 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 SLC 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 | 1,609 | 86.4% | 56 min | 0.31% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC 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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am153 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am212 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm375 flights87.7%
- 2pm–5pm356 flights86.2%
- 5pm–8pm368 flights80.3%
- 8pm–5am145 flights85.4%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 80.3% for the evening window. That is 12 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 375 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SLC 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 SLC to MSP, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 92.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 80.3%, a wide gap of 12.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am90.8%
- 8–11am92.5%
- 11am–2pm87.7%
- 2–5pm86.2%
- 5–8pm80.3%
- 8pm–5am85.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
July is the worst month at 79.6% on time, 15 points below October, the best at 94.4%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.7%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,529 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,251 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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 991 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 runs 85.1% on time across 1,616 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,609 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 94.4% on time and July 79.6%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,602 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to MSP questions
How often is SLC 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 13.6% of the 1,609 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SLC to MSP compared with the rest of the country?
86.4% 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 SLC to MSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.3%, 12 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 July delays on SLC to MSP?
July is the weakest month at 79.6% on time, compared with 94.4% in October. Across the year that is 15 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 SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- ORD to MSP, a related route69.9%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.4%
- 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. SLC to MSP and MSP to SLC 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.