Flight number record

DL 2178

Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Minneapolis

Route: SFO → MSP
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.2 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 166 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

94.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

132 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 80 of 364 flights, with 06:05 (65 flights) and 05:45 (57 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:0080 flights22.0%
Departs 06:0565 flights17.9%
Departs 05:4557 flights15.7%

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 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 94.2%. 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 2178 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 2178 is 12 points ahead of 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 beats by 13 points.

DL 2178 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2178thin sample	364	94.2%	132 min	1.10%	A
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 2178 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2178 held fairly steady: 92.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 95.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 92.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights92.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights95.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights96.6%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights92.2%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2178 did best on Thursday at 100.0% on time and worst on Monday at 88.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2178 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 64% of the 2,777 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
64%
Late-arriving aircraft
31%
National Airspace System
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 1,775 of the 2,777 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,777 delay minutes reported on DL 2178.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, 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 3.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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: 94.2% on time and 1.10% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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