Flight number record

DL 1544

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Chicago

Route: MSP → ORD
Departs: 06:55
Flights: 340
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1544, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1544 lands a B+, 3 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 340 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

On time

80.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 340 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 1544 flies

DL 1544 flies MSP to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:55, used on 184 of 340 flights, with 07:00 (110 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:55184 flights54.1%
Departs 07:00110 flights32.4%

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 06:55 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1544 runs 9 points worse at 80.7%. 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 1544 next to MSP to ORD

Every carrier on MSP to ORD combined arrived on time 69.9% of the time across 6,324 flights, so DL 1544 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,412 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 67.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 1544 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1544thin sample	340	80.7%	64 min	0.29%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on MSP–ORD	1,412	67.3%	66 min	1.84%	C
All carriers on MSP–ORD	6,324	69.9%	80 min	2.40%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1544 quarter by quarter

DL 1544 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 91.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.2%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 85 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 202590 flights74.2%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights76.9%
Jan–Mar 202683 flights80.2%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights91.0%

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

By weekday, DL 1544 did best on Monday at 88.0% on time and worst on Saturday at 69.0%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1544 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 4,148 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
51%
National Airspace System
45%
Extreme weather
3%
Late-arriving aircraft
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 2,113 of the 4,148 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,148 delay minutes reported on DL 1544.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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

8.0% 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 same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including EGE to ATL (16), ATL to EGE (16) and ORD to MSP (1), but none flew often enough under DL 1544 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MSP to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 340 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 1544

For a booking, read DL 1544 as 80.7% on time with 0.29% cancelled over 340 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