Flight number record

DL 2306

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Des Moines

Route: ATL → DSM
Departs: 21:20
Flights: 348
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2306, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2306 lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 348 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2306's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.30%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 2306 flies

DL 2306 flies ATL to DSM without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:20, used on 135 of 348 flights, with 21:15 (86 flights) and 21:25 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:20135 flights38.8%
Departs 21:1586 flights24.7%
Departs 21:2536 flights10.3%

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 21:20 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 2306 runs 12 points better at 82.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 2306 next to ATL to DSM

Every carrier on ATL to DSM combined arrived on time 85.5% of the time across 1,249 flights, so DL 2306 is 3 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 2306 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2306thin sample	348	82.9%	71 min	2.30%	B
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DSM	1,249	85.5%	61 min	2.24%	A
All carriers on ATL–DSM	1,249	85.5%	61 min	2.24%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2306 quarter by quarter

DL 2306 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 92.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.3%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 87 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 flights78.3%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights92.1%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights83.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.5%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2306 did best on Saturday at 93.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 73.9%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2306 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,103 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
7%

38% 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 4,103 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 4,103 delay minutes reported on DL 2306.

Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.9% 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 743 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 348 flights under DL 2306 in the data flew ATL to DSM. 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. 348 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 2306

For a booking, read DL 2306 as 82.9% on time with 2.30% cancelled over 348 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