Flight number record

DL 1039

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Atlanta

Route: MSP → ATL
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1039, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1039 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1039's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 124 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 1039 flies

DL 1039 flies MSP to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 233 of 363 flights, with 07:15 (74 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00233 flights64.2%
Departs 07:1574 flights20.4%

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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1039 runs level with that at 90.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1039 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 1039 is 7 points ahead of 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 beats by 8 points.

DL 1039 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1039thin sample	363	90.0%	71 min	0.55%	A+
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 1039 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1039 held fairly steady: 91.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 86.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 93.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 89.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights91.3%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights86.7%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights93.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1039 ranged from 84.3% on Saturday to 96.2% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 1039 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,550 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
58%
National Airspace System
21%
Late-arriving aircraft
10%
Extreme weather
10%

The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 1,485 of the 2,550 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,550 delay minutes reported on DL 1039.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 363 flights under DL 1039 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. 363 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 1039

For a booking, DL 1039 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.0% on time and 0.55% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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