Flight number record

DL 661

Delta Air Lines · Fort Lauderdale to Cincinnati

Route: FLL → CVG
Departs: 17:59
Flights: 349
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 661 runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 66 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 341 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.01%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 349 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 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 349 flights, with 19:59 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:5960 flights17.2%
Departs 19:5940 flights11.5%

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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 661 runs 3 points better at 71.0%. 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 661 next to FLL to CVG

Every carrier on FLL to CVG combined arrived on time 71.4% of the time across 987 flights, so DL 661 is about level with it. Delta flew 533 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 11 points.

DL 661 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 661thin sample	349	71.0%	82 min	2.01%	C
All Delta Air Lines on FLL–CVG	533	72.7%	78 min	1.31%	C
All carriers on FLL–CVG	987	71.4%	88 min	1.11%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 2025 at 58.4%, a swing of 24 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 flights58.4%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights82.3%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights73.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights71.4%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 661 did best on Wednesday at 88.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 48.9%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 39 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 661 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 8,088 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
61%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
2%

61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 8,088 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 8,088 delay minutes reported on DL 661.

Cancellations sit at 2.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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.

DL 661 is not only a FLL to CVG flight. It also flew CVG to FLL (317 flights, 76.5% 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. 349 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.

Other routes flown as DL 661
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
CVG to FLLthin sample	317	76.5%	73 min	1.89%	B

What to do with this

Booking DL 661

For a booking, read DL 661 as 71.0% on time with 2.01% cancelled over 349 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