Flight number record

DL 1046

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Atlanta

Route: MSP → ATL
Departs: 10:00
Flights: 364
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1046, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1046 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1046's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

4.7%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 364 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 1046 flies

DL 1046 flies MSP to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:00, used on 84 of 364 flights.

Departs 10:0084 flights23.1%

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 10:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1046 runs level with that at 84.3%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

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Against the route

DL 1046 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 1046 is 3 points ahead of 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 beats by 3 points.

DL 1046 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1046thin sample	364	84.3%	52 min	0.27%	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 1046 quarter by quarter

DL 1046 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 79.1%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 73 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 flights96.7%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights89.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights83.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.1%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights80.6%

Scale runs 70% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 1046 did best on Tuesday at 94.2% on time and worst on Sunday at 80.4%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 1046 runs when it is late

DL 1046 often beats the schedule: 105 of 363 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 31 of the 57 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 17 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early105 flights28.9%
Within 15 min201 flights55.4%
15–29 min late31 flights8.5%
30–59 min late9 flights2.5%
1–2 hours late14 flights3.9%
2+ hours late3 flights0.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 56 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 17 still arrived on time. 18 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 1046

The latest arrival of the period was on 11 May 2026, 5 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of DL 1046 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
11 May 2026	5 hours 48 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 January 2026	3 hours 22 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
11 July 2026	2 hours 47 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 January 2026	1 hour 57 minutes	Carrier
1 May 2026	1 hour 56 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 1046 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,967 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
2%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,967 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 to one. The split is drawn from 2,967 delay minutes reported on DL 1046.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.

Every one of the 364 flights under DL 1046 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. 364 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 1046

For a booking, read DL 1046 as 84.3% on time with 0.27% cancelled over 364 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures