Flight number record
DL 2970
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- MSP → DFW
- Departs
- 10:00
- Flights
- 329
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2970, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2970 lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That rests on 329 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2970's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 324 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 329 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 94 of 329 flights, with 10:05 (79 flights) and 11:21 (62 flights) next.
- Departs 10:0094 flights28.6%
- Departs 10:0579 flights24.0%
- Departs 11:2162 flights18.8%
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 10:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 2970 runs level with that at 83.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 2970 next to MSP to DFW
Every carrier on MSP to DFW combined arrived on time 77.8% of the time across 3,312 flights, so DL 2970 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,413 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2970thin sample | 329 | 83.0% | 46 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–DFW | 1,413 | 79.6% | 56 min | 1.49% | B |
| All carriers on MSP–DFW | 3,312 | 77.8% | 83 min | 2.23% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2970 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2970 held fairly steady: 83.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 78.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 86.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights83.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.7%
- Apr–Jun 202660 flights78.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights86.9%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2970 did best on Tuesday at 93.8% on time and worst on Saturday at 70.0%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2970 runs when it is late
DL 2970 often beats the schedule: 119 of 324 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 55 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early119 flights36.7%
- Within 15 min150 flights46.3%
- 15–29 min late22 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late20 flights6.2%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 324 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 45 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 18 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2970
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 December 2025, 3 hours 8 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 20 December 2025 | 3 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 December 2025 | 2 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 February 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 25 January 2026 | 1 hour 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 January 2026 | 1 hour 32 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2970 runs late
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 2,520 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 36%National Airspace System
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,231 of the 2,520 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,520 delay minutes reported on DL 2970.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.61%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
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. 329 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 83.0% on time with 0.91% cancelled over 329 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2967 on the same route75.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2972 on the same route84.6%
- American Airlines 1395 on the same route86.3%
- Delta Air Lines 2971 on the same route74.8%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.