Flight number record

DL 2972

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: MSP → DFW
Departs: 06:55
Flights: 364
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2972, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2972 earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2972's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.37%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

4.2%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 2972 flies

DL 2972 flies MSP to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:55, used on 52 of 364 flights.

Departs 06:5552 flights14.3%

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 06:55 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2972 runs 5 points worse at 84.6%. 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 2972 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 2972 is 7 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 4 points.

DL 2972 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2972thin sample	364	84.6%	48 min	1.37%	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 2972 quarter by quarter

DL 2972 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 77.8%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 73 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 202530 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights85.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights87.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights77.8%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights87.1%

Scale runs 70% to 95%.

By weekday, DL 2972 did best on Sunday at 91.8% on time and worst on Friday at 76.9%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 2972 runs when it is late

DL 2972 often beats the schedule: 148 of 357 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 55 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

15+ min early148 flights41.5%
Within 15 min154 flights43.1%
15–29 min late26 flights7.3%
30–59 min late14 flights3.9%
1–2 hours late12 flights3.4%
2+ hours late3 flights0.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 357 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

9 of 43 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. In the other direction, 21 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 2972

The latest arrival of the period was on 31 October 2025, 4 hours 56 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).

The latest arrivals of DL 2972 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
31 October 2025	4 hours 56 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
24 November 2025	2 hours 21 minutes	Carrier
28 March 2026	2 hours	Carrier
19 June 2026	1 hour 44 minutes	National Airspace System
25 September 2025	1 hour 31 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 2972 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 2,629 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,031 of the 2,629 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,629 delay minutes reported on DL 2972.

Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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.

DL 2972 is not only a MSP to DFW flight. It also flew DFW to MSP (315 flights, 84.1% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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.

Other routes flown as DL 2972
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DFW to MSPthin sample	315	84.1%	87 min	1.59%	B

What to do with this

Booking DL 2972

For a booking, read DL 2972 as 84.6% on time with 1.37% cancelled over 364 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures