Flight number record
DL 949
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Minneapolis
- Route
- SEA → MSP
- Departs
- 18:05
- Flights
- 315
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 949, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 949 lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 315 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 949's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 42 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 308 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.59%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 315 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 949 flies
DL 949 flies SEA to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:05, used on 83 of 315 flights, with 15:35 (62 flights) and 15:30 (60 flights) next.
- Departs 18:0583 flights26.3%
- Departs 15:3562 flights19.7%
- Departs 15:3060 flights19.0%
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 18:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 949 runs 14 points better at 81.5%. 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 949 next to SEA to MSP
Every carrier on SEA to MSP combined arrived on time 87.2% of the time across 2,676 flights, so DL 949 is 6 points behind it. Delta flew 1,745 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 89.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 949thin sample | 315 | 81.5% | 93 min | 1.59% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on SEA–MSP | 1,745 | 89.0% | 78 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| All carriers on SEA–MSP | 2,676 | 87.2% | 64 min | 0.78% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 949 quarter by quarter
DL 949 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 86.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 72.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 79 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 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights77.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.2%
- Apr–Jun 202683 flights82.9%
- Jul–Sep 202648 flights72.9%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 949 did best on Wednesday at 88.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 66.0%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 949 runs when it is late
DL 949 often beats the schedule: 110 of 308 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 57 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 20 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early110 flights35.7%
- Within 15 min141 flights45.8%
- 15–29 min late25 flights8.1%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late10 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 308 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 86 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 33 still arrived on time. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 949
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 November 2025, 14 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 November 2025 | 14 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 August 2026 | 12 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 7 hours 31 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 July 2026 | 5 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 4 January 2026 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 949 runs late
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 5,290 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 3%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,156 of the 5,290 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,290 delay minutes reported on DL 949.
Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.63%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.5% 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 an hour and a half, 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.
Every one of the 315 flights under DL 949 in the data flew SEA to MSP. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 315 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 949
For a booking, DL 949 is one of the weaker ways to fly SEA to MSP: 6 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to MSP, every carrier and departure
- MSP to SEA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 943 on the same route96.4%
- Delta Air Lines 536 on the same route90.6%
- Alaska Airlines 555 on the same route85.2%
- Alaska Airlines 386 on the same route83.8%
- Delta Air Lines 941 on the same route88.9%
- Delta Air Lines 953 on the same route90.9%
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.