Flight number record
DL 2871
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Hartford
- Route
- MSP → BDL
- Departs
- 20:15
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2871, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2871 lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
78.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.20%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
8.5%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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 2871 flies
DL 2871 flies MSP to BDL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:15, used on 111 of 364 flights, with 20:22 (60 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 20:15111 flights30.5%
- Departs 20:2260 flights16.5%
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 20:15 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 2871 runs 8 points better at 78.3%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
DL 2871 next to MSP to BDL
Every carrier on MSP to BDL combined arrived on time 81.2% of the time across 833 flights, so DL 2871 is 3 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2871thin sample | 364 | 78.3% | 68 min | 2.20% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–BDL | 833 | 81.2% | 64 min | 2.16% | B |
| All carriers on MSP–BDL | 833 | 81.2% | 64 min | 2.16% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 2871 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2871 held fairly steady: 76.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 77.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights76.9%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights81.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights77.5%
Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2871 did best on Wednesday at 86.5% on time and worst on Thursday at 64.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 2871 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 5,199 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.
- 60%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 3,126 of the 5,199 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,199 delay minutes reported on DL 2871.
Cancellations sit at 2.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
8.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,050 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.
Every one of the 364 flights under DL 2871 in the data flew MSP to BDL. 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 2871
For a booking, read DL 2871 as 78.3% on time with 2.20% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to BDL, every carrier and departure
- BDL to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2007 on the same route82.8%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.