Flight number record

DL 2970

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: MSP → DFW
Departs: 10:00
Flights: 325
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2970, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2970 lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 325 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2970's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 320 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.62%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 325 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 2970 flies

DL 2970 flies MSP to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:00, used on 122 of 325 flights, with 10:05 (79 flights) and 11:21 (62 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:00122 flights37.5%
Departs 10:0579 flights24.3%
Departs 11:2162 flights19.1%

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 10:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 2970 runs 2 points worse at 81.9%. 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 2970 next to MSP to DFW

Every carrier on MSP to DFW combined arrived on time 76.4% of the time across 3,261 flights, so DL 2970 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,411 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 2970 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2970thin sample	325	81.9%	49 min	0.62%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on MSP–DFW	1,411	77.9%	59 min	1.35%	B
All carriers on MSP–DFW	3,261	76.4%	83 min	2.45%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2970 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2970 held fairly steady: 84.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 83.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 78.0% 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 202584 flights84.3%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights83.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.7%
Apr–Jun 202660 flights78.0%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2970 did best on Tuesday at 93.9% on time and worst on Saturday at 62.2%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2970 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 2,812 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%
National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
10%
Extreme weather
3%

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 1,396 of the 2,812 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,812 delay minutes reported on DL 2970.

Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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 852 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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including DFW to MSP (129), but none flew often enough under DL 2970 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MSP to DFW only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 325 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 2970

For a booking, read DL 2970 as 81.9% on time with 0.62% cancelled over 325 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures