Flight number record

DL 1028

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Atlanta

Route: MSP → ATL
Departs: 16:33
Flights: 351
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1028, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1028 lands a B+, 3 points 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 351 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

On time

80.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 351 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 1028 flies

DL 1028 flies MSP to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:33, used on 57 of 351 flights, with 16:45 (39 flights) and 16:50 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:3357 flights16.2%
Departs 16:4539 flights11.1%
Departs 16:5038 flights10.8%

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 16:33 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1028 runs 8 points better at 80.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1028 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 1028 is 2 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%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 1028 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1028thin sample	351	80.8%	82 min	0.00%	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 1028 quarter by quarter

DL 1028 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 88.8% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 72.2%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 88 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 202579 flights86.1%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights76.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights72.2%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1028 ranged from 76.1% on Wednesday to 87.2% on Tuesday. With about 50 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 1028 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 5,461 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
54%
National Airspace System
23%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 2,935 of the 5,461 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,461 delay minutes reported on DL 1028.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.6% 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 a little over 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 351 flights under DL 1028 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. 351 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 1028

For a booking, read DL 1028 as 80.8% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 351 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