Flight number record
DL 536
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Minneapolis
- Route
- SEA → MSP
- Departs
- 09:25
- Flights
- 330
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 536, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 536 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 330 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 536's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 133 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 329 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.30%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 330 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 536 flies
DL 536 flies SEA to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:25, used on 87 of 330 flights, with 09:05 (63 flights) and 08:00 (43 flights) next.
- Departs 09:2587 flights26.4%
- Departs 09:0563 flights19.1%
- Departs 08:0043 flights13.0%
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 09:25 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 536 runs 7 points better at 90.6%. 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 536 next to SEA to MSP
Every carrier on SEA to MSP combined arrived on time 87.2% of the time across 2,676 flights, so DL 536 is 3 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,745 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 89.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 536thin sample | 330 | 90.6% | 57 min | 0.30% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on SEA–MSP | 1,745 | 89.0% | 78 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| All carriers on SEA–MSP | 2,676 | 87.2% | 64 min | 0.78% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 536 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 536 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 90.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.9% in Jan–Mar 2026, 90.1% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 90.3% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights90.0%
- Jan–Mar 202667 flights90.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights90.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.3%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 536 did best on Wednesday at 95.8% on time and worst on Friday at 83.7%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 536 runs when it is late
DL 536 often beats the schedule: 121 of 329 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 31 late arrivals split 14 under half an hour, 8 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early121 flights36.8%
- Within 15 min177 flights53.8%
- 15–29 min late14 flights4.3%
- 30–59 min late8 flights2.4%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.5%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 329 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 30 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 9 still arrived on time. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 536
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 April 2026, 3 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 April 2026 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 20 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 15 December 2025 | 3 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 February 2026 | 2 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 December 2025 | 1 hour 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 536 runs late
Carrier accounts for 56% of the 1,764 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 986 of the 1,764 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,764 delay minutes reported on DL 536.
Cancellations are rare at 0.30%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.7% 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 1,399 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 BOS (13), but none flew often enough under DL 536 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SEA to MSP only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 330 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 536
For a booking, DL 536 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.6% on time and 0.30% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to MSP, every carrier and departure
- MSP to SEA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 943 on the same route96.4%
- Alaska Airlines 555 on the same route85.2%
- Delta Air Lines 949 on the same route81.5%
- Alaska Airlines 386 on the same route83.8%
- Delta Air Lines 941 on the same route88.9%
- Delta Air Lines 953 on the same route90.9%
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.