Flight number record
DL 2989
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Hartford
- Route
- DTW → BDL
- Departs
- 21:30
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2989, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2989 lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 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 2989 flies
DL 2989 flies DTW to BDL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:30, used on 63 of 363 flights, with 21:55 (62 flights) and 21:50 (61 flights) next.
- Departs 21:3063 flights17.4%
- Departs 21:5562 flights17.1%
- Departs 21:5061 flights16.8%
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 21:30 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 2989 runs 7 points better at 77.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 2989 next to DTW to BDL
Every carrier on DTW to BDL combined arrived on time 85.4% of the time across 1,242 flights, so DL 2989 is 8 points behind it. Delta flew 1,240 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2989thin sample | 363 | 77.4% | 70 min | 1.10% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–BDL | 1,240 | 85.5% | 68 min | 2.18% | A |
| All carriers on DTW–BDL | 1,242 | 85.4% | 71 min | 2.17% | A |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2989 quarter by quarter
DL 2989 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.3%, a swing of 27 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 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights66.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights74.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights79.0%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2989 did best on Wednesday at 82.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 66.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2989 runs when it is late
DL 2989 often beats the schedule: 117 of 359 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 81 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early117 flights32.6%
- Within 15 min161 flights44.8%
- 15–29 min late25 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late29 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights5.6%
- 2+ hours late7 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 79 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2989
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 February 2026, 15 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across February, November, January, March and October, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 February 2026 | 15 hours 44 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 9 November 2025 | 4 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 26 January 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 October 2025 | 3 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 2989 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 5,705 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Extreme weather
- 20%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,705 delay minutes reported on DL 2989.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 549 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.
Every one of the 363 flights under DL 2989 in the data flew DTW to BDL. 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. 363 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 2989
For a booking, DL 2989 is one of the weaker ways to fly DTW to BDL: 8 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to BDL, every carrier and departure
- BDL to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2163 on the same route88.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2814 on the same route86.2%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.