Flight number record

DL 2971

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: MSP → DFW
Departs: 14:50
Flights: 318
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2971, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2971 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 318 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2971 runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 311 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.94%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 318 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 2971 flies

DL 2971 flies MSP to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:50, used on 84 of 318 flights, with 14:56 (34 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 14:5084 flights26.4%
Departs 14:5634 flights10.7%

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 14:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 2971 runs level with that at 73.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 2971 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 2971 is 3 points behind 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%, which this flight trails by 8 points.

DL 2971 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2971thin sample	318	73.6%	66 min	0.94%	C+
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 2971 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2971 held fairly steady: 71.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 69.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 77.5% in Apr–Jun 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 202582 flights71.6%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights69.0%
Jan–Mar 202674 flights77.8%
Apr–Jun 202674 flights77.5%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2971 did best on Tuesday at 87.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 56.8%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 31 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2971 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 5,389 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
22%
Extreme weather
6%

33% 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 1,798 minutes out of 5,389, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,389 delay minutes reported on DL 2971.

Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.26%.

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. 9.0% 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 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 two other city pairs in the data, including DFW to MSP (90) and ATL to CVG (5), but none flew often enough under DL 2971 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. 318 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 2971

For a booking, read DL 2971 as 73.6% on time with 0.94% cancelled over 318 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