Carrier route record

DLSTL→MSP

Delta Air Lines · St. Louis to Minneapolis

Flights: 886
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 47%
Carriers: 3

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

Delta on STL to MSP earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 886 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's STL to MSP record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 875 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.13%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.8%

Every carrier on STL to MSP, 1,896 flights

These figures cover 886 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on STL to MSP

Delta flew 886 of the 1,896 flights on STL to MSP, about 47% of it. Its 84.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.1% to SkyWest at 75.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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 STL to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	886	84.1%	90 min	1.13%	B
Southwest Airlines	651	76.0%	53 min	0.31%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	359	75.9%	106 min	1.67%	B

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on STL to MSP

DL 159706:0090.0% · 365 flights

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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am365 flights90.0%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm183 flights79.1%
2pm–5pm47 flights84.8%
5pm–8pm291 flights79.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 79.1% on time against 90.0% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on STL to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, July worst

July is the worst month at 72.0% on time, 23 points below May, 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. September was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.5%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 12,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
3%

47% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 12,436 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 5,055 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.0% 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 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 79.5% on time across 886 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. 886 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. 886 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 875 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