Route profile
MSP→SEA
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Minneapolis to Seattle, 1,399 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 91% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 8,343 flights. How this is calculated
MSP → SEA arrives on time 84.2% of the time; the return trip, SEA → MSP, arrives on time 85.8% of the time.
MSP → SEA spends 30.5 minutes on the ground on a 1,399-mile trip: 18.3 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at MSP and 12.1 minutes from touchdown to gate at SEA.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why MSP → SEA flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
MSP → SEA cancelled 56 of 8,343 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 149. The reason filed most often was the airline, 69.6% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 214 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 56 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.
39 cancellations, 69.6% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
17 cancellations, 30.4% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
0 cancellations, 0.0% 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.
56 coded cancellations were recorded on MSP → SEA; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
26 min late
against a median of 10 min early
Percentiles over 8,343 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at SEA after arriving from MSP.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 31% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 15% | High risk |
| 60 min | 8.8% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 3.9% | Low risk |
| 120 min | 2.2% | 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 0.67% of the time and diverts 0.14% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 8,275 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 26 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 8,343 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
MSP → SEA flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 90.9% of the time, against 74.3% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 16.6 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 94.4% on time from 488 flights
- 7 AM: 89.0% on time from 1,144 flights
- 8 AM: 91.5% on time from 894 flights
- 9 AM: 88.2% on time from 238 flights
- 10 AM: 90.8% on time from 267 flights
- 11 AM: 91.2% on time from 571 flights
- 12 PM: 94.4% on time from 338 flights
- 1 PM: 86.5% on time from 157 flights
- 2 PM: 79.5% on time from 1,288 flights
- 3 PM: 81.3% on time from 469 flights
- 4 PM: 77.7% on time from 212 flights
- 5 PM: 81.9% on time from 230 flights
- 6 PM: 79.2% on time from 1,060 flights
- 7 PM: 61.0% on time from 393 flights
- 8 PM: too few flights to score
- 9 PM: 76.7% on time from 443 flights
- 10 PM: 80.6% on time from 129 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why MSP → SEA runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
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 MSP → SEA. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
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 | 5,430 | 85.9% | 0.48% | -11 min | 3.7% |
| Alaska Airlines | 2,913 | 80.9% | 1.03% | -8 min | 4.4% |
Delta Air Lines flew 65.1% of the 8,343 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 5.0 percentage points more often than Alaska Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL889 (11:00 AM) arrived on time 90.4% of the time, 13.3 points more often than DL881 (6:45 PM) at 77.1%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Thursday the least, a gap of 5.7 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 82.1%
- Feb: 86.8%
- Mar: 78.9%
- Apr: 92.7%
- May: 85.8%
- Jun: 77.2%
- Jul: 80.6%
- Aug: 82.3%
- Sep: 90.6%
- Oct: 91.1%
- Nov: 87.8%
- Dec: 77.2%
December is historically the weakest month and April the strongest, a spread of 15.5 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 77.4% from 253 flights
- August 2023: 86.7% from 256 flights
- September 2023: 90.1% from 243 flights
- October 2023: 91.5% from 246 flights
- November 2023: 86.1% from 210 flights
- December 2023: 95.5% from 202 flights
- January 2024: 88.2% from 181 flights
- February 2024: 95.1% from 164 flights
- March 2024: 82.9% from 206 flights
- April 2024: 94.2% from 225 flights
- May 2024: 85.4% from 241 flights
- June 2024: 64.9% from 269 flights
- July 2024: 77.6% from 285 flights
- August 2024: 73.4% from 287 flights
- September 2024: 89.8% from 264 flights
- October 2024: 92.3% from 222 flights
- November 2024: 94.7% from 188 flights
- December 2024: 84.6% from 201 flights
- January 2025: 89.4% from 179 flights
- February 2025: 83.8% from 160 flights
- March 2025: 86.3% from 198 flights
- April 2025: 90.3% from 196 flights
- May 2025: 87.6% from 218 flights
- June 2025: 83.8% from 269 flights
- July 2025: 82.4% from 295 flights
- August 2025: 87.0% from 292 flights
- September 2025: 92.0% from 264 flights
- October 2025: 89.4% from 230 flights
- November 2025: 83.0% from 202 flights
- December 2025: 52.2% from 208 flights
- January 2026: 68.1% from 167 flights
- February 2026: 81.3% from 157 flights
- March 2026: 66.7% from 200 flights
- April 2026: 93.3% from 197 flights
- May 2026: 84.4% from 226 flights
- June 2026: 83.3% from 252 flights
- July 2026: 84.4% from 290 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 81.3% against 86.0% in the 12 months before — declining by 4.7 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 8,343 MSP → SEA 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