Flight number record
DL 661
Delta Air Lines · Fort Lauderdale to Cincinnati
- Route
- FLL → CVG
- Departs
- 17:59
- Flights
- 320
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 661, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 661 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 320 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 661 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 320 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 661 flies
DL 661 flies FLL to CVG without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 60 of 320 flights.
- Departs 17:5960 flights18.8%
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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 661 runs 4 points better at 71.7%. 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 661 next to FLL to CVG
Every carrier on FLL to CVG combined arrived on time 70.3% of the time across 975 flights, so DL 661 is about level with it. Delta flew 525 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 661thin sample | 320 | 71.7% | 92 min | 1.56% | C |
| All Delta Air Lines on FLL–CVG | 525 | 71.8% | 84 min | 0.95% | C+ |
| All carriers on FLL–CVG | 975 | 70.3% | 91 min | 1.03% | C |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 661 quarter by quarter
DL 661 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 43.8%, a swing of 39 points on roughly 64 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 flights70.0%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights82.3%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights73.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights71.4%
- Jul–Sep 202633 flights43.8%
Scale runs 35% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 661 did best on Wednesday at 84.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 52.4%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 661 runs when it is late
DL 661 often beats the schedule: 87 of 314 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 89 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 36 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early87 flights27.7%
- Within 15 min138 flights43.9%
- 15–29 min late27 flights8.6%
- 30–59 min late26 flights8.3%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights5.7%
- 2+ hours late18 flights5.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 314 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 80 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 22 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 CVG.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 661
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 18 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 18 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 July 2026 | 13 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 June 2026 | 6 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 March 2026 | 5 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 February 2026 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 661 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 8,198 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,198 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 to one. The split is drawn from 8,198 delay minutes reported on DL 661.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 932 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 661 is not only a FLL to CVG flight. It also flew CVG to FLL (313 flights, 77.9% 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. 320 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVG to FLLthin sample | 313 | 77.9% | 81 min | 1.28% | B |
What to do with this
Booking DL 661
For a booking, read DL 661 as 71.7% on time with 1.56% cancelled over 320 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to CVG, every carrier and departure
- CVG to FLL, the return direction
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.