Flight number record
DL 2697
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Minneapolis
- Route
- DTW → MSP
- Departs
- 12:20
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2697, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2697 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2697's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 2697 flies
DL 2697 flies DTW to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:20, used on 83 of 364 flights, with 12:45 (69 flights) and 12:30 (63 flights) next.
- Departs 12:2083 flights22.8%
- Departs 12:4569 flights19.0%
- Departs 12:3063 flights17.3%
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 12:20 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 2697 runs 6 points better at 84.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 2697 next to DTW to MSP
Every carrier on DTW to MSP combined arrived on time 79.8% of the time across 1,881 flights, so DL 2697 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,879 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2697thin sample | 364 | 84.7% | 51 min | 1.10% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–MSP | 1,879 | 79.8% | 62 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| All carriers on DTW–MSP | 1,881 | 79.8% | 62 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2697 quarter by quarter
DL 2697 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 89.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.7%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 73 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 flights76.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights84.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights80.6%
Scale runs 70% to 95%.
By weekday, DL 2697 did best on Thursday at 92.3% on time and worst on Wednesday at 76.9%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2697 runs when it is late
The 55 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 17 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early85 flights23.6%
- Within 15 min220 flights61.1%
- 15–29 min late21 flights5.8%
- 30–59 min late17 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 47 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2697
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 February 2026, 3 hours 20 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.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 February 2026 | 3 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 December 2025 | 2 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 March 2026 | 2 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 January 2026 | 2 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 December 2025 | 1 hour 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 2697 runs late
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 2,787 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,517 of the 2,787 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,787 delay minutes reported on DL 2697.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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 8.3% 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 528 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 364 flights under DL 2697 in the data flew DTW to MSP. 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. 364 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 2697
For a booking, read DL 2697 as 84.7% on time with 1.10% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to MSP, every carrier and departure
- MSP to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2258 on the same route85.3%
- Delta Air Lines 2203 on the same route75.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1746 on the same route84.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1303 on the same route70.9%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.