Flight number record
DL 2962
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Washington
- Route
- MSP → DCA
- Departs
- 18:37
- Flights
- 279
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2962, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2962 draws a D. 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 279 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 2962 runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 133 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 272 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.15%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
17.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 279 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 279 flights, with 18:35 (56 flights) and 18:41 (30 flights) next.
- Departs 18:3767 flights24.0%
- Departs 18:3556 flights20.1%
- Departs 18:4130 flights10.8%
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 18:37 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 2962 runs 4 points worse at 64.0%. 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 2962 next to MSP to DCA
Every carrier on MSP to DCA combined arrived on time 74.6% of the time across 2,632 flights, so DL 2962 is 11 points behind it. Delta flew 1,701 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 17 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2962thin sample | 279 | 64.0% | 72 min | 2.15% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–DCA | 1,701 | 75.9% | 61 min | 1.94% | B |
| All carriers on MSP–DCA | 2,632 | 74.6% | 85 min | 3.19% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | 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 Jan–Mar 2026 at 56.5%, a swing of 11 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 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202570 flights67.1%
- Jan–Mar 202665 flights56.5%
- Apr–Jun 202670 flights66.2%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights60.8%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2962 did best on Monday at 73.6% on time and worst on Friday at 54.2%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2962 runs when it is late
The 98 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 34 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 47 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early47 flights17.3%
- Within 15 min127 flights46.7%
- 15–29 min late17 flights6.3%
- 30–59 min late34 flights12.5%
- 1–2 hours late29 flights10.7%
- 2+ hours late18 flights6.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 272 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 103 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2962
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 4 hours 51 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 March 2026 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 June 2026 | 3 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 July 2026 | 2 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 August 2026 | 2 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 2962 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,028 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 38%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,700 of the 7,028 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,028 delay minutes reported on DL 2962.
Cancellations sit at 2.15% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
17.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
Every one of the 279 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. 279 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. 17.3% 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 2963 on the same route76.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2961 on the same route69.3%
- Delta Air Lines 2983 on the same route84.1%
- Delta Air Lines 2958 on the same route83.7%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.