Flight number record

DL 2656

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Houston

Route: MSP → IAH
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 350
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2656, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2656 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 350 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2656's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.86%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 2656 flies

DL 2656 flies MSP to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 115 of 350 flights, with 07:05 (95 flights) and 07:20 (57 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00115 flights32.9%
Departs 07:0595 flights27.1%
Departs 07:2057 flights16.3%

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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2656 runs 5 points worse at 84.6%. 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 2656 next to MSP to IAH

Every carrier on MSP to IAH combined arrived on time 80.9% of the time across 1,835 flights, so DL 2656 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,272 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 3 points.

DL 2656 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2656thin sample	350	84.6%	59 min	0.86%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on MSP–IAH	1,272	77.8%	60 min	0.94%	B+
All carriers on MSP–IAH	1,835	80.9%	61 min	0.98%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2656 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2656 held fairly steady: 84.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 83.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 81.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 89.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202582 flights84.1%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.3%
Jan–Mar 202687 flights81.4%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights89.7%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2656 did best on Thursday at 94.1% on time and worst on Saturday at 69.2%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 25 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2656 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 3,120 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
56%
National Airspace System
27%
Late-arriving aircraft
10%
Extreme weather
8%

The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,734 of the 3,120 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,120 delay minutes reported on DL 2656.

Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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 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 IAH to MSP (234), 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. 350 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, read DL 2656 as 84.6% on time with 0.86% cancelled over 350 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