Flight number record

DL 2617

Delta Air Lines · Houston to Minneapolis

Route: IAH → MSP
Departs: 16:46
Flights: 337
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2617, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2617 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 337 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2617 runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 336 completed flights

Avg delay

118 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.30%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

14.3%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 337 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 2617 flies

DL 2617 flies IAH to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:46, used on 36 of 337 flights. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:4636 flights10.7%

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 16:46 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 2617 runs level with that at 72.3%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 2617 next to IAH to MSP

Every carrier on IAH to MSP combined arrived on time 78.6% of the time across 1,835 flights, so DL 2617 is 6 points behind it. Delta flew 1,272 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 9 points.

DL 2617 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2617thin sample	337	72.3%	118 min	0.30%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on IAH–MSP	1,272	78.9%	98 min	1.02%	B
All carriers on IAH–MSP	1,835	78.6%	86 min	0.98%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2617 quarter by quarter

DL 2617 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 81.2% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 64.6%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 84 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 202591 flights70.3%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights64.6%
Jan–Mar 202681 flights81.2%
Apr–Jun 202686 flights73.3%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2617 did best on Tuesday at 78.4% on time and worst on Wednesday at 66.0%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2617 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 11,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
Carrier
44%
National Airspace System
5%
Extreme weather
1%

50% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 10,964 delay minutes reported on DL 2617.

Cancellations are rare at 0.30%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 1,034 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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including MSP to IAH (30), but none flew often enough under DL 2617 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to MSP only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 337 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 2617

For a booking, DL 2617 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.3% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.

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