Flight number record

DL 2159

Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Minneapolis

Route: SFO → MSP
Departs: 15:40
Flights: 323
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2159, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2159 lands a B+, 2 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 323 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

On time

79.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 321 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.31%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 323 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 2159 flies

DL 2159 flies SFO to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:40, used on 56 of 323 flights, with 15:26 (46 flights) and 15:45 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:4056 flights17.3%
Departs 15:2646 flights14.2%
Departs 15:4541 flights12.7%

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 15:40 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 2159 runs 7 points better at 79.1%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 2159 next to SFO to MSP

Every carrier on SFO to MSP combined arrived on time 82.5% of the time across 1,919 flights, so DL 2159 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 1,445 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

DL 2159 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2159thin sample	323	79.1%	62 min	0.31%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on SFO–MSP	1,445	83.3%	64 min	0.97%	B+
All carriers on SFO–MSP	1,919	82.5%	62 min	0.73%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2159 quarter by quarter

DL 2159 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 87.9% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 69.2%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 81 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 202592 flights87.9%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights78.2%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights82.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights69.2%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2159 did best on Saturday at 95.3% on time and worst on Friday at 66.7%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 29 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2159 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 4,171 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
61%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
0%

61% 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 4,171 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 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 4,171 delay minutes reported on DL 2159.

Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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

7.5% 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.

At 1,589 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including DTW to BUF (24), but none flew often enough under DL 2159 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SFO to MSP only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 323 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 2159

For a booking, read DL 2159 as 79.1% on time with 0.31% cancelled over 323 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