Flight number record

DL 2903

Delta Air Lines · Kansas City to Salt Lake City

Route: MCI → SLC
Departs: 17:59
Flights: 334
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2903, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2903 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 334 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2903's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 330 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.90%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 334 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 2903 flies

DL 2903 flies MCI to SLC without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 38 of 334 flights, with 14:53 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:5938 flights11.4%
Departs 14:5338 flights11.4%

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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2903 runs 18 points better at 85.8%. 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 2903 next to MCI to SLC

Every carrier on MCI to SLC combined arrived on time 87.3% of the time across 1,012 flights, so DL 2903 is 2 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

DL 2903 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2903thin sample	334	85.8%	62 min	0.90%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on MCI–SLC	1,012	87.3%	61 min	1.09%	A
All carriers on MCI–SLC	1,012	87.3%	61 min	1.09%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2903 quarter by quarter

DL 2903 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 90.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.8%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 84 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 202584 flights85.7%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights78.8%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights90.5%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights88.3%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2903 did best on Tuesday at 96.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 78.8%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2903 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 2,913 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
48%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
2%

48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,913 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,913 delay minutes reported on DL 2903.

Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.2% 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 920 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.

DL 2903 is not only a MCI to SLC flight. It also flew SLC to MCI (310 flights, 84.9% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 334 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.

Other routes flown as DL 2903
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SLC to MCIthin sample	310	84.9%	51 min	1.61%	B

What to do with this

Booking DL 2903

For a booking, DL 2903 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.8% on time and 0.90% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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