Flight number record
DL 2727
Delta Air Lines · Des Moines to Atlanta
- Route
- DSM → ATL
- Departs
- 05:35
- Flights
- 349
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2727, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2727 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2727's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 168 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
94.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 339 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.29%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
3.2%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 349 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 19 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 2727 flies
DL 2727 flies DSM to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:35, used on 119 of 349 flights, with 05:44 (56 flights) and 05:30 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 05:35119 flights34.1%
- Departs 05:4456 flights16.0%
- Departs 05:3035 flights10.0%
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 05:35 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2727 runs 5 points better at 94.4%. 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 2727 next to DSM to ATL
Every carrier on DSM to ATL combined arrived on time 89.8% of the time across 1,250 flights, so DL 2727 is 5 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2727thin sample | 349 | 94.4% | 109 min | 2.29% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on DSM–ATL | 1,250 | 89.8% | 91 min | 2.24% | A |
| All carriers on DSM–ATL | 1,250 | 89.8% | 91 min | 2.24% | A |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 2727 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2727 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 93.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 95.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights93.3%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights91.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.5%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2727 ranged from 87.2% on Saturday to 98.0% on Tuesday. With about 50 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why DL 2727 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 79% of the 2,065 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.
- 79%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 79%, 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 1,630 of the 2,065 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,065 delay minutes reported on DL 2727.
Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% 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 743 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 DFW to SLC (16), but none flew often enough under DL 2727 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DSM to ATL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 349 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 2727
For a booking, read DL 2727 as 94.4% on time with 2.29% cancelled over 349 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DSM to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to DSM, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1704 on the same route88.6%
- Delta Air Lines 2086 on the same route86.6%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.