Flight number record
DL 2931
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Denver
- Route
- MSP → DEN
- Departs
- 18:45
- Flights
- 350
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2931, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2931 draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 350 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2931 runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 125 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.86%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
13.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% 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 2931 flies
DL 2931 flies MSP to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:45, used on 113 of 350 flights, with 18:50 (63 flights) and 18:36 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:45113 flights32.3%
- Departs 18:5063 flights18.0%
- Departs 18:3636 flights10.3%
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 18:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2931 runs 3 points worse at 65.1%. 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 2931 next to MSP to DEN
Every carrier on MSP to DEN combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 5,838 flights, so DL 2931 is 13 points behind it. Delta flew 1,804 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 17 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2931thin sample | 350 | 65.1% | 69 min | 0.86% | C+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–DEN | 1,804 | 76.0% | 59 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| All carriers on MSP–DEN | 5,838 | 77.6% | 69 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 2931 quarter by quarter
DL 2931 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 53.3%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 88 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 202592 flights53.3%
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights57.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights71.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights76.7%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2931 did best on Saturday at 74.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 54.2%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 2931 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 8,296 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.
- 42%Carrier
- 39%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 3,485 of the 8,296 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,296 delay minutes reported on DL 2931.
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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 680 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 350 flights under DL 2931 in the data flew MSP to DEN. 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. 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 2931
For a booking, DL 2931 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.0% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1025 on the same route79.7%
- United Airlines 1891 on the same route80.5%
- United Airlines 2272 on the same route64.0%
- Frontier Airlines 1149 on the same route82.0%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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 often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.