Carrier route record
DLSTL→MSP
Delta Air Lines · St. Louis to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 906
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on STL to MSP 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 906 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 399 at 74.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's STL to MSP record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 896 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.4%
Every carrier on STL to MSP, 1,962 flights
These figures cover 906 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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
Delta against every carrier on STL to MSP
Delta flew 906 of the 1,962 flights on STL to MSP, about 46% of it. Its 85.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.0% to Southwest at 74.5%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 (this page) | 906 | 85.0% | 86 min | 1.10% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 399 | 74.6% | 98 min | 1.50% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 657 | 74.5% | 53 min | 0.30% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 74.6%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on STL to MSP
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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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am364 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm189 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm47 flights84.8%
- 5pm–8pm306 flights79.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 79.5% for the evening window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on STL to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 75.0% on time, against 95.3% 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.3%, a spread of 6 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on STL to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on STL to MSP often beats the schedule: 386 of 896 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 134 late arrivals split 48 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 57 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early386 flights43.1%
- Within 15 min376 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late48 flights5.4%
- 30–59 min late29 flights3.2%
- 1–2 hours late29 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late28 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 896 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 126 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. 25 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on STL to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 September 2025, 7 hours 53 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 September 2025 | 7 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 September 2025 | 7 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 October 2025 | 6 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 June 2026 | 6 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 November 2025 | 5 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 11,451 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,951 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 448 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.9% on time across 906 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 906 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on STL to MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 906 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 85.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 896 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- STL to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to STL, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on STL to MSP74.6%
- Southwest Airlines on STL to MSP74.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.