Flight number record
DL 1026
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Atlanta
- Route
- MSP → ATL
- Departs
- 18:10
- Flights
- 361
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1026, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1026 lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 361 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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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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 124 of 361 flights, with 18:12 (66 flights) and 18:15 (46 flights) next.
- Departs 18:10124 flights34.3%
- Departs 18:1266 flights18.3%
- Departs 18:1546 flights12.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
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 68.0%, and DL 1026 runs 9 points better at 77.1%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 1026 next to MSP to ATL
Every carrier on MSP to ATL combined arrived on time 81.7% of the time across 3,489 flights, so DL 1026 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 3,207 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1026thin sample | 361 | 77.1% | 63 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–ATL | 3,207 | 83.6% | 67 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| All carriers on MSP–ATL | 3,489 | 81.7% | 67 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | 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 72 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 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights81.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights68.2%
- Apr–Jun 202687 flights73.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights82.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
By weekday, DL 1026 did best on Wednesday at 86.5% on time and worst on Thursday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1026 runs when it is late
DL 1026 often beats the schedule: 136 of 358 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 82 late arrivals split 28 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 26 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early136 flights38.0%
- Within 15 min140 flights39.1%
- 15–29 min late28 flights7.8%
- 30–59 min late28 flights7.8%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights5.6%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 112 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 41 still arrived on time. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1026
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 8 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across March, July, November and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 8 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 July 2026 | 6 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 November 2025 | 4 hours 3 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 July 2026 | 3 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 September 2025 | 2 hours 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why DL 1026 runs late
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 5,124 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,701 of the 5,124 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,124 delay minutes reported on DL 1026.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.89% 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
7.3% 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 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.
Every one of the 361 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. 361 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 77.1% on time with 0.83% cancelled over 361 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1048 on the same route78.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1052 on the same route90.6%
- Delta Air Lines 1062 on the same route92.0%
- Delta Air Lines 1046 on the same route84.3%
- Delta Air Lines 1039 on the same route90.6%
- Delta Air Lines 1028 on the same route79.2%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.