Flight number record

DL 1026

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Atlanta

Route: MSP → ATL
Departs: 18:10
Flights: 359
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1026, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1026 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

On time

78.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 359 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.

Schedule

When DL 1026 flies

DL 1026 flies MSP to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:10, used on 171 of 359 flights, with 18:12 (66 flights) and 18:15 (46 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:10171 flights47.6%
Departs 18:1266 flights18.4%
Departs 18:1546 flights12.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 18:10 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1026 runs 10 points better at 78.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 1026 next to MSP to ATL

Every carrier on MSP to ATL combined arrived on time 82.8% of the time across 3,504 flights, so DL 1026 is 4 points behind it. Delta flew 3,201 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

DL 1026 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1026thin sample	359	78.4%	59 min	0.56%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on MSP–ATL	3,201	84.5%	66 min	0.41%	B+
All carriers on MSP–ATL	3,504	82.8%	67 min	0.51%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1026 quarter by quarter

DL 1026 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 68.2%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 90 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202590 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights81.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights68.2%
Apr–Jun 202687 flights73.6%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1026 did best on Monday at 86.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 68.0%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1026 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 4,570 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.

Carrier
51%
National Airspace System
25%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 2,349 of the 4,570 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,570 delay minutes reported on DL 1026.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% 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 routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 907 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 359 flights under DL 1026 in the data flew MSP to ATL. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 359 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 DL 1026

For a booking, read DL 1026 as 78.4% on time with 0.56% cancelled over 359 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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