Flight number record
DL 2962
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Washington
- Route
- MSP → DCA
- Departs
- 18:37
- Flights
- 270
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2962, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2962 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 270 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2962 runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 162 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 264 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.48%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
14.4%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 270 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% 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 2962 flies
DL 2962 flies MSP to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:37, used on 67 of 270 flights, with 18:35 (42 flights) and 18:41 (30 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:3767 flights24.8%
- Departs 18:3542 flights15.6%
- Departs 18:4130 flights11.1%
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 18:37 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2962 runs 7 points worse at 61.4%. 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 2962 next to MSP to DCA
Every carrier on MSP to DCA combined arrived on time 74.3% of the time across 2,574 flights, so DL 2962 is 13 points behind it. Delta flew 1,695 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 20 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2962thin sample | 270 | 61.4% | 63 min | 1.48% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–DCA | 1,695 | 75.6% | 60 min | 2.12% | B |
| All carriers on MSP–DCA | 2,574 | 74.3% | 81 min | 3.22% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 2962 quarter by quarter
DL 2962 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 67.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 54.7%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 68 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 202565 flights54.7%
- Oct–Dec 202570 flights67.1%
- Jan–Mar 202665 flights56.5%
- Apr–Jun 202670 flights66.2%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2962 did best on Monday at 71.2% on time and worst on Friday at 52.1%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 2962 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 6,462 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.
- 44%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,851 minutes out of 6,462, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,462 delay minutes reported on DL 2962.
Cancellations sit at 1.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.74%.
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. 14.4% 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 931 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 270 flights under DL 2962 in the data flew MSP to DCA. 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. 270 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 2962
For a booking, DL 2962 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.4% 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 DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2961 on the same route69.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2963 on the same route76.3%
- Delta Air Lines 2958 on the same route83.1%
- Delta Air Lines 2983 on the same route84.9%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.