Flight number record

DL 2518

Delta Air Lines · Cedar Rapids to Atlanta

Route: CID → ATL
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 348
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

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

DL 2518 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2518's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 342 completed flights

Avg delay

89 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.44%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 2518 flies

DL 2518 flies CID to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 69 of 348 flights, with 05:57 (55 flights) and 05:45 (50 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:0069 flights19.8%
Departs 05:5755 flights15.8%
Departs 05:4550 flights14.4%

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 2518 runs level with that at 88.9%. 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 2518 next to CID to ATL

Every carrier on CID to ATL combined arrived on time 88.3% of the time across 367 flights, so DL 2518 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 2518 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2518thin sample	348	88.9%	89 min	1.44%	A
All Delta Air Lines on CID–ATL	367	88.3%	103 min	1.91%	A
All carriers on CID–ATL	367	88.3%	103 min	1.91%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 94.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 83.3%, a swing of 11 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 flights94.6%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights83.3%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights90.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2518 did best on Tuesday at 95.9% on time and worst on Saturday at 83.3%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2518 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 3,368 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
67%
Extreme weather
18%
National Airspace System
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,368 delay minutes reported on DL 2518.

Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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.

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. 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 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, DL 2518 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.9% on time and 1.44% 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