Flight number record

DL 574

Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Sacramento

Route: MSP → SMF
Departs: 18:40
Flights: 348
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 574, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 574 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

On time

79.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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.

Schedule

When DL 574 flies

DL 574 flies MSP to SMF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:40, used on 97 of 348 flights, with 18:45 (83 flights) and 18:55 (62 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:4097 flights27.9%
Departs 18:4583 flights23.9%
Departs 18:5562 flights17.8%

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 18:40 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 574 runs 11 points better at 79.0%. 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 574 next to MSP to SMF

Every carrier on MSP to SMF combined arrived on time 82.5% of the time across 590 flights, so DL 574 is 4 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

DL 574 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 574thin sample	348	79.0%	58 min	0.29%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on MSP–SMF	590	82.5%	53 min	0.51%	B+
All carriers on MSP–SMF	590	82.5%	53 min	0.51%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 574 quarter by quarter

DL 574 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 84.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 72.9%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 87 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 202592 flights80.4%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights77.2%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights72.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.6%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 574 did best on Monday at 90.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 69.4%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 574 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 66% of the 4,266 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
66%
National Airspace System
18%
Late-arriving aircraft
15%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,808 of the 4,266 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,266 delay minutes reported on DL 574.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,517 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including ATL to TUS (12) and TUS to ATL (12), but none flew often enough under DL 574 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MSP to SMF only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 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 574

For a booking, read DL 574 as 79.0% on time with 0.29% cancelled over 348 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