Flight number record

DL 1046

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Atlanta

Route: MSP → ATL
Departs: 10:00
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1046's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 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, with 10:05 (61 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:0084 flights23.1%
Departs 10:0561 flights16.8%

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 10:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 1046 runs level with that at 84.6%. 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 1046 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 1046 is 2 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 3 points.

DL 1046 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1046thin sample	364	84.6%	60 min	0.27%	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 1046 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1046 held fairly steady: 87.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 89.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 83.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 79.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights87.0%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights89.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights83.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.1%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1046 did best on Tuesday at 96.2% on time and worst on Sunday at 80.4%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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 3,343 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
22%

39% 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 3,343 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 3,343 delay minutes reported on DL 1046.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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

5.2% 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 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. 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 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 84.6% 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures