Route profile
BOS→MSP
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Boston to Minneapolis, 1,124 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 74% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 6,273 flights. How this is calculated
BOS → MSP arrives on time 82.5% of the time; the return trip, MSP → BOS, arrives on time 77.4% of the time, a 5.1-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
BOS → MSP spends 28.1 minutes on the ground on a 1,124-mile trip: 20.7 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at BOS and 7.4 minutes from touchdown to gate at MSP.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
This route has stayed remarkably steady year over year, a smaller swing than 93% of 5,368 comparable routes.
82.9% on time over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), against 82.5% in the 12 months before (2024-08 to 2025-07), virtually unchanged.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 5,368 in the comparison.
Why BOS → MSP flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
BOS → MSP cancelled 51 of 6,273 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 123. The reason filed most often was the airline, 43.1% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 285 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 51 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
22 cancellations, 43.1% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
20 cancellations, 39.2% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
9 cancellations, 17.6% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
51 coded cancellations were recorded on BOS → MSP; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
35 min late
against a median of 9 min early
Percentiles over 6,273 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at MSP after arriving from BOS.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 32% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 17% | High risk |
| 60 min | 11% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 6.1% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.9% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 0.81% of the time and diverts 0.13% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 6,214 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 35 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 6,273 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
BOS → MSP flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 91.8% of the time, against 69.1% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 22.7 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 93.3% on time from 883 flights
- 6 AM: 93.3% on time from 225 flights
- 7 AM: 90.6% on time from 486 flights
- 8 AM: 90.2% on time from 647 flights
- 9 AM: too few flights to score
- 10 AM: 88.0% on time from 128 flights
- 11 AM: 86.2% on time from 933 flights
- 12 PM to 1 PM: too few flights to score
- 2 PM: 79.7% on time from 176 flights
- 3 PM: 77.7% on time from 1,091 flights
- 4 PM: 77.2% on time from 199 flights
- 5 PM: 71.4% on time from 289 flights
- 6 PM: 71.2% on time from 837 flights
- 7 PM: too few flights to score
- 8 PM: 57.7% on time from 164 flights
- 9 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why BOS → MSP runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for BOS → MSP. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on BOS → MSP, at 38.6%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 91.8% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 69.1%.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 5,713 | 83.8% | 0.74% | -9 min | 5.4% |
| JetBlue | 560 | 68.8% | 1.61% | -1 min | 14.0% |
Delta Air Lines flew 91.1% of the 6,273 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 15.0 percentage points more often than JetBlue on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL2303 (5:45 AM) arrived on time 92.3% of the time, 20.7 points more often than DL1098 (6:20 PM) at 71.6%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Monday the least, a gap of 5.6 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 83.2%
- Feb: 84.2%
- Mar: 87.4%
- Apr: 84.1%
- May: 87.7%
- Jun: 77.0%
- Jul: 71.5%
- Aug: 80.4%
- Sep: 85.8%
- Oct: 84.8%
- Nov: 88.4%
- Dec: 82.1%
July is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 16.9 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 69.2% from 204 flights
- August 2023: 79.7% from 213 flights
- September 2023: 86.4% from 223 flights
- October 2023: 84.1% from 239 flights
- November 2023: 89.3% from 178 flights
- December 2023: 90.5% from 179 flights
- January 2024: 81.2% from 155 flights
- February 2024: 93.7% from 146 flights
- March 2024: 91.3% from 174 flights
- April 2024: 86.3% from 176 flights
- May 2024: 83.4% from 199 flights
- June 2024: 68.4% from 196 flights
- July 2024: 69.1% from 207 flights
- August 2024: 71.2% from 209 flights
- September 2024: 89.6% from 201 flights
- October 2024: 84.7% from 202 flights
- November 2024: 94.6% from 147 flights
- December 2024: 84.0% from 150 flights
- January 2025: 89.8% from 128 flights
- February 2025: too few flights to score (112)
- March 2025: 86.1% from 144 flights
- April 2025: 76.1% from 142 flights
- May 2025: 86.1% from 151 flights
- June 2025: 82.1% from 168 flights
- July 2025: 75.0% from 177 flights
- August 2025: 91.7% from 181 flights
- September 2025: 80.7% from 176 flights
- October 2025: 85.9% from 177 flights
- November 2025: 81.1% from 148 flights
- December 2025: 69.7% from 147 flights
- January 2026: 78.6% from 122 flights
- February 2026: too few flights to score (106)
- March 2026: 83.7% from 144 flights
- April 2026: 89.2% from 148 flights
- May 2026: 94.8% from 155 flights
- June 2026: 81.8% from 170 flights
- July 2026: 73.1% from 179 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 82.9% against 82.5% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 6,273 BOS → MSP flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed