Flight number record
DL 2656
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Houston
- Route
- MSP → IAH
- Departs
- 07:05
- Flights
- 360
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2656, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2656 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 about an hour. That rests on 360 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2656'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.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 360 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 2656 flies
DL 2656 flies MSP to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:05, used on 127 of 360 flights, with 07:00 (95 flights) and 07:20 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 07:05127 flights35.3%
- Departs 07:0095 flights26.4%
- Departs 07:2057 flights15.8%
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 07:05 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2656 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 2656 next to MSP to IAH
Every carrier on MSP to IAH combined arrived on time 82.2% of the time across 1,940 flights, so DL 2656 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,278 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2656thin sample | 360 | 86.8% | 55 min | 0.83% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–IAH | 1,278 | 79.7% | 62 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| All carriers on MSP–IAH | 1,940 | 82.2% | 62 min | 0.88% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2656 quarter by quarter
DL 2656 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 81.4%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 72 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 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.3%
- Jan–Mar 202687 flights81.4%
- Apr–Jun 202689 flights89.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.9%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2656 did best on Tuesday at 96.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 77.8%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2656 runs when it is late
DL 2656 often beats the schedule: 132 of 355 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 47 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early132 flights37.2%
- Within 15 min176 flights49.6%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.1%
- 30–59 min late16 flights4.5%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
7 of 32 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 22 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at IAH.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2656
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 April 2026, 3 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 April 2026 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 January 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 November 2025 | 2 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 September 2025 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 February 2026 | 2 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 2656 runs late
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 2,599 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,241 of the 2,599 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,599 delay minutes reported on DL 2656.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including IAH to MSP (224), but none flew often enough under DL 2656 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MSP to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 360 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 2656
For a booking, DL 2656 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 86.8% on time and 0.83% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2683 on the same route72.7%
- Delta Air Lines 2644 on the same route79.0%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.