Flight number record
DL 889
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Seattle
- Route
- MSP → SEA
- Departs
- 11:00
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 889, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 889 earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 889's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.15%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
5.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 889 flies
DL 889 flies MSP to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:00, used on 92 of 348 flights, with 11:10 (86 flights) and 10:25 (55 flights) next.
- Departs 11:0092 flights26.4%
- Departs 11:1086 flights24.7%
- Departs 10:2555 flights15.8%
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 11:00 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 889 runs 7 points better at 85.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 889 next to MSP to SEA
Every carrier on MSP to SEA combined arrived on time 80.9% of the time across 2,676 flights, so DL 889 is 5 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 80.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 889thin sample | 348 | 85.4% | 57 min | 1.15% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–SEA | 1,745 | 80.6% | 59 min | 0.86% | B+ |
| All carriers on MSP–SEA | 2,676 | 80.9% | 62 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 889 quarter by quarter
DL 889 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.3%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 70 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 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.7%
- Jan–Mar 202673 flights78.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights80.6%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 889 did best on Saturday at 95.2% on time and worst on Sunday at 76.6%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 889 runs when it is late
DL 889 often beats the schedule: 120 of 343 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 50 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early120 flights35.0%
- Within 15 min173 flights50.4%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late14 flights4.1%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights3.8%
- 2+ hours late5 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 343 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 37 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 21 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 SEA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 889
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 3 hours 22 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 3 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 May 2026 | 2 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 August 2026 | 2 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 December 2025 | 2 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 July 2026 | 2 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 889 runs late
Carrier accounts for 59% of the 2,865 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,699 of the 2,865 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,865 delay minutes reported on DL 889.
Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
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 LAS to SEA (3), but none flew often enough under DL 889 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MSP to SEA 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 889
For a booking, DL 889 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.4% on time and 1.15% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to SEA, every carrier and departure
- SEA to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 868 on the same route87.0%
- Delta Air Lines 881 on the same route73.2%
- Delta Air Lines 877 on the same route71.7%
- Alaska Airlines 387 on the same route83.6%
- Alaska Airlines 555 on the same route77.3%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) 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.