Flight number record

DL 2518

Delta Air Lines · Cedar Rapids to Atlanta

Route: CID → ATL
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 348
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2518, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2518 earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2518's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 341 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.72%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

5.0%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 2518 flies

DL 2518 flies CID to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 63 of 348 flights, with 05:45 (60 flights) and 05:50 (41 flights) next.

Departs 06:0063 flights18.1%
Departs 05:4560 flights17.2%
Departs 05:5041 flights11.8%

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 2518 runs 3 points worse at 86.8%. 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 2518 next to CID to ATL

Every carrier on CID to ATL combined arrived on time 86.3% of the time across 367 flights, so DL 2518 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 6 points.

DL 2518 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2518thin sample	348	86.8%	83 min	1.72%	A
All Delta Air Lines on CID–ATL	367	86.3%	95 min	2.18%	A
All carriers on CID–ATL	367	86.3%	95 min	2.18%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 2518 quarter by quarter

DL 2518 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 82.0%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 70 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 202530 flights96.7%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights83.3%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights90.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights82.0%

Scale runs 75% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 2518 did best on Tuesday at 95.8% on time and worst on Saturday at 77.1%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 2518 runs when it is late

DL 2518 often beats the schedule: 141 of 341 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 45 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.

15+ min early141 flights41.3%
Within 15 min155 flights45.5%
15–29 min late16 flights4.7%
30–59 min late12 flights3.5%
1–2 hours late7 flights2.1%
2+ hours late10 flights2.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 341 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

7 of 40 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 2518

The latest arrival of the period was on 1 May 2026, 6 hours 53 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.

The latest arrivals of DL 2518 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
1 May 2026	6 hours 53 minutes	Carrier
7 December 2025	4 hours 12 minutes	Extreme weather
22 January 2026	4 hours 4 minutes	Carrier
30 November 2025	3 hours 30 minutes	Extreme weather
12 August 2026	3 hours 30 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 2518 runs late

Carrier accounts for 70% of the 3,713 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
70%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,713 delay minutes reported on DL 2518.

Cancellations sit at 1.72% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 694 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.

Every one of the 348 flights under DL 2518 in the data flew CID to ATL. 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 2518

For a booking, read DL 2518 as 86.8% on time with 1.72% 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures