Flight number record

DL 2966

Delta Air Lines · Norfolk to Atlanta

Route: ORF → ATL
Departs: 05:20
Flights: 277
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2966, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2966 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 277 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2966's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 136 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 274 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.08%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 277 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 2966 flies

DL 2966 flies ORF to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:20, used on 76 of 277 flights, with 05:50 (60 flights) and 05:15 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 05:2076 flights27.4%
Departs 05:5060 flights21.7%
Departs 05:1540 flights14.4%

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 05:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2966 runs level with that at 91.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 2966 next to ORF to ATL

Every carrier on ORF to ATL combined arrived on time 85.6% of the time across 2,919 flights, so DL 2966 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,701 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 10 points.

DL 2966 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2966thin sample	277	91.2%	108 min	1.08%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ORF–ATL	2,701	86.2%	85 min	1.55%	A
All carriers on ORF–ATL	2,919	85.6%	86 min	1.54%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2966 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2966 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 89.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 95.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
Oct–Dec 202583 flights89.2%
Jan–Mar 202673 flights87.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.6%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2966 did best on Wednesday at 97.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 85.0%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2966 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 84% of the 2,593 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
84%
National Airspace System
16%

The largest share of delay minutes, 84%, 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 2,171 of the 2,593 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,593 delay minutes reported on DL 2966.

Cancellations sit at 1.08% 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 4.4% 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 516 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 277 flights under DL 2966 in the data flew ORF to ATL. 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. 277 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 2966

For a booking, DL 2966 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 91.2% on time and 1.08% 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