Flight number record

DL 1042

Delta Air Lines · Austin to Minneapolis

Route: AUS → MSP
Departs: 18:15
Flights: 263
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1042, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1042 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 263 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 1042 runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 260 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.38%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 263 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 1042 flies

DL 1042 flies AUS to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:15, used on 56 of 263 flights, with 18:12 (34 flights) and 18:09 (33 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:1556 flights21.3%
Departs 18:1234 flights12.9%
Departs 18:0933 flights12.5%

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 18:15 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1042 runs level with that at 68.8%. 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 1042 next to AUS to MSP

Every carrier on AUS to MSP combined arrived on time 76.6% of the time across 1,678 flights, so DL 1042 is 8 points behind it. Delta flew 1,021 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 13 points.

DL 1042 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1042thin sample	263	68.8%	70 min	0.38%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on AUS–MSP	1,021	77.5%	92 min	1.27%	B
All carriers on AUS–MSP	1,678	76.6%	81 min	0.83%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1042 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1042 held fairly steady: 69.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 65.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 72.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 67.3% 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 202565 flights69.8%
Oct–Dec 202572 flights65.3%
Jan–Mar 202677 flights72.4%
Apr–Jun 202649 flights67.3%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1042 did best on Friday at 79.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 55.0%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1042 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 5,701 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
3%

44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 5,701 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 5,701 delay minutes reported on DL 1042.

Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 1,042 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.

The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including MSP to AUS (162) and PVD to ATL (28), but none flew often enough under DL 1042 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to AUS to MSP only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 263 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 1042

For a booking, DL 1042 is one of the weaker ways to fly AUS to MSP: 8 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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