Flight number record

DL 2959

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Wichita

Route: ATL → ICT
Departs: 21:20
Flights: 349
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2959'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 345 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.15%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 349 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 2959 flies

DL 2959 flies ATL to ICT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:20, used on 48 of 349 flights, with 21:17 (38 flights) and 21:22 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:2048 flights13.8%
Departs 21:1738 flights10.9%
Departs 21:2236 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 21:20 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 2959 runs 15 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 2959 next to ATL to ICT

Every carrier on ATL to ICT combined arrived on time 86.8% of the time across 1,147 flights, so DL 2959 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, 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	85.8%	65 min	1.15%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–ICT	1,147	86.8%	54 min	1.31%	A
All carriers on ATL–ICT	1,147	86.8%	54 min	1.31%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2959 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2959 held fairly steady: 81.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 86.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights81.5%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights87.2%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights86.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.9%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2959 did best on Wednesday at 90.0% on time and worst on Monday at 78.0%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2959 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 3,175 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.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 1,600 of the 3,175 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,175 delay minutes reported on DL 2959.

Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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 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. 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 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, DL 2959 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.8% on time and 1.15% 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