Flight number record
DL 889
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Seattle
- Route
- MSP → SEA
- Departs
- 11:00
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 889, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 889 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 889's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.15%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
4.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 889 flies
DL 889 flies MSP to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:00, used on 133 of 348 flights, with 10:30 (70 flights) and 10:25 (55 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 11:00133 flights38.2%
- Departs 10:3070 flights20.1%
- Departs 10:2555 flights15.8%
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 11:00 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 889 runs 8 points better at 87.2%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 889 next to MSP to SEA
Every carrier on MSP to SEA combined arrived on time 81.1% of the time across 2,690 flights, so DL 889 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,737 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 889thin sample | 348 | 87.2% | 54 min | 1.15% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–SEA | 1,737 | 82.1% | 60 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| All carriers on MSP–SEA | 2,690 | 81.1% | 58 min | 1.04% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | 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 92.4% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.3%, a swing of 14 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 flights92.4%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.7%
- Jan–Mar 202673 flights78.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.2%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 889 did best on Thursday at 94.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 78.7%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 889 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,367 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 8%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 1,383 of the 2,367 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,367 delay minutes reported on DL 889.
Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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. 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.
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: 87.2% 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 route86.7%
- Delta Air Lines 877 on the same route75.9%
- Alaska Airlines 387 on the same route84.2%
- Delta Air Lines 881 on the same route73.1%
- Alaska Airlines 555 on the same route75.2%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.