Flight number record

DL 1493

Delta Air Lines · Washington to Minneapolis

Route: DCA → MSP
Departs: 07:45
Flights: 272
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1493, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1493 lands a B, 4 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 272 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

On time

81.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 268 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.47%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 272 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 1493 flies

DL 1493 flies DCA to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:45, used on 103 of 272 flights, with 07:35 (56 flights) and 07:40 (48 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:45103 flights37.9%
Departs 07:3556 flights20.6%
Departs 07:4048 flights17.6%

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 07:45 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1493 runs 8 points worse at 81.3%. 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 1493 next to DCA to MSP

Every carrier on DCA to MSP combined arrived on time 77.3% of the time across 2,574 flights, so DL 1493 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,695 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 1493 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1493thin sample	272	81.3%	75 min	1.47%	B
All Delta Air Lines on DCA–MSP	1,695	79.9%	98 min	2.06%	B
All carriers on DCA–MSP	2,574	77.3%	90 min	2.80%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1493 quarter by quarter

DL 1493 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 88.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 75.0%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 68 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 202568 flights82.4%
Oct–Dec 202569 flights79.7%
Jan–Mar 202666 flights75.0%
Apr–Jun 202669 flights88.1%

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

By weekday, DL 1493 did best on Saturday at 85.7% on time and worst on Thursday at 73.1%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1493 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 66% of the 3,734 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
66%
National Airspace System
34%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 2,469 of the 3,734 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,734 delay minutes reported on DL 1493.

Cancellations sit at 1.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 931 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 272 flights under DL 1493 in the data flew DCA to MSP. 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. 272 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 1493

For a booking, read DL 1493 as 81.3% on time with 1.47% cancelled over 272 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