Flight number record

DL 2989

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Hartford

Route: DTW → BDL
Departs: 21:55
Flights: 359
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2989, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2989 lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

On time

76.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.11%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 359 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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 2989 flies

DL 2989 flies DTW to BDL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:55, used on 62 of 359 flights, with 21:50 (55 flights) and 21:41 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:5562 flights17.3%
Departs 21:5055 flights15.3%
Departs 21:4153 flights14.8%

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 21:55 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 2989 runs 6 points better at 76.3%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 2989 next to DTW to BDL

Every carrier on DTW to BDL combined arrived on time 84.4% of the time across 1,297 flights, so DL 2989 is 8 points behind it. Delta flew 1,233 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

DL 2989 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2989thin sample	359	76.3%	70 min	1.11%	B
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–BDL	1,233	84.8%	69 min	1.62%	B
All carriers on DTW–BDL	1,297	84.4%	71 min	1.54%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2989 quarter by quarter

DL 2989 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 84.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.3%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 90 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 202588 flights79.3%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights66.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights74.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.6%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2989 did best on Thursday at 80.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 68.0%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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 5,840 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
19%

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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,840 delay minutes reported on DL 2989.

Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

8.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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.

Every one of the 359 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. 359 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.

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