Flight number record
DL 2178
Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Minneapolis
- Route
- SFO → MSP
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2178, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2178 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2178's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 171 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
94.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights
Avg delay
124 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 2178 flies
DL 2178 flies SFO to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 92 of 364 flights, with 05:45 (57 flights) and 06:20 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 06:0092 flights25.3%
- Departs 05:4557 flights15.7%
- Departs 06:2057 flights15.7%
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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2178 runs 5 points better at 94.4%. 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 2178 next to SFO to MSP
Every carrier on SFO to MSP combined arrived on time 78.6% of the time across 1,927 flights, so DL 2178 is 16 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,449 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2178thin sample | 364 | 94.4% | 124 min | 1.10% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on SFO–MSP | 1,449 | 79.6% | 60 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| All carriers on SFO–MSP | 1,927 | 78.6% | 61 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2178 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2178 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 95.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 92.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 95.2% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights95.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights96.6%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights92.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights95.2%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2178 ranged from 90.2% on Monday to 96.2% on Friday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2178 runs when it is late
DL 2178 often beats the schedule: 176 of 360 completed flights, 49%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 20 late arrivals split 7 under half an hour, 3 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early176 flights48.9%
- Within 15 min164 flights45.6%
- 15–29 min late7 flights1.9%
- 30–59 min late3 flights0.8%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights1.1%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 20 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 6 still arrived on time. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2178
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 June 2026, 10 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 June 2026 | 10 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 December 2025 | 6 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 March 2026 | 5 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 March 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 June 2026 | 3 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2178 runs late
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,477 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,477 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 2,477 delay minutes reported on DL 2178.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% 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.
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.
Every one of the 364 flights under DL 2178 in the data flew SFO 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. 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 2178
For a booking, DL 2178 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 94.4% on time and 1.10% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to MSP, every carrier and departure
- MSP to SFO, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2159 on the same route72.7%
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.