Flight number record

DL 2959

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Wichita

Route: ATL → ICT
Departs: 20:45
Flights: 349
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2959, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2959 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2959's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.72%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

5.0%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 349 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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Schedule

When DL 2959 flies

DL 2959 flies ATL to ICT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:45, used on 57 of 349 flights, with 21:20 (48 flights) and 21:17 (38 flights) next.

Departs 20:4557 flights16.3%
Departs 21:2048 flights13.8%
Departs 21:1738 flights10.9%

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 20:45 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 2959 runs 15 points better at 85.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

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Against the route

DL 2959 next to ATL to ICT

Every carrier on ATL to ICT combined arrived on time 85.4% of the time across 1,152 flights, so DL 2959 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

DL 2959 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2959thin sample	349	85.4%	64 min	1.72%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–ICT	1,152	85.4%	57 min	1.39%	A
All carriers on ATL–ICT	1,152	85.4%	57 min	1.39%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 2959 quarter by quarter

DL 2959 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 75.0%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 70 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 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights87.2%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights86.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.9%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights75.0%

Scale runs 65% to 95%.

By weekday, DL 2959 did best on Wednesday at 94.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 72.3%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 2959 runs when it is late

DL 2959 often beats the schedule: 130 of 343 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 50 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.

15+ min early130 flights37.9%
Within 15 min163 flights47.5%
15–29 min late21 flights6.1%
30–59 min late12 flights3.5%
1–2 hours late11 flights3.2%
2+ hours late6 flights1.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 343 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

11 of 50 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 2959

The latest arrival of the period was on 6 October 2025, 9 hours 24 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.

The latest arrivals of DL 2959 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
6 October 2025	9 hours 24 minutes	Carrier
18 June 2026	3 hours 46 minutes	Carrier
17 March 2026	2 hours 59 minutes	Carrier
15 March 2026	2 hours 55 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
11 July 2026	2 hours 12 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 2959 runs late

Carrier accounts for 47% of the 3,187 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
47%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
2%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,187 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 to one. The split is drawn from 3,187 delay minutes reported on DL 2959.

Cancellations sit at 1.72% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 782 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 349 flights under DL 2959 in the data flew ATL to ICT. 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. 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 2959

For a booking, read DL 2959 as 85.4% on time with 1.72% cancelled over 349 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures