Flight number record
DL 953
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Minneapolis
- Route
- SEA → MSP
- Departs
- 23:59
- Flights
- 254
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 953, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 953 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 254 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 953's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 136 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 252 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 254 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When DL 953 flies
DL 953 flies SEA to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 23:59, used on 144 of 254 flights, with 23:55 (69 flights) next.
- Departs 23:59144 flights56.7%
- Departs 23:5569 flights27.2%
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 23:59 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 953 runs 21 points better at 90.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 953 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 953 is 4 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 89.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 953thin sample | 254 | 90.9% | 75 min | 0.79% | A+ |
| 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 953 quarter by quarter
DL 953 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 81.5%, a swing of 15 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 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202586 flights95.3%
- Jan–Mar 202618 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202666 flights87.9%
- Jul–Sep 202654 flights81.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 953 ranged from 87.1% on Tuesday to 93.5% on Wednesday. With about 36 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 953 runs when it is late
DL 953 often beats the schedule: 109 of 252 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 23 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early109 flights43.3%
- Within 15 min120 flights47.6%
- 15–29 min late6 flights2.4%
- 30–59 min late7 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 252 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 31 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 13 still arrived on time. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 953
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 August 2026, 9 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 August 2026 | 9 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 August 2026 | 2 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 July 2026 | 1 hour 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 1 hour 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 August 2026 | 1 hour 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 953 runs late
Carrier accounts for 61% of the 1,716 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,054 of the 1,716 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,716 delay minutes reported on DL 953.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including ORD to MSP (62), but none flew often enough under DL 953 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SEA to MSP only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 254 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 953
For a booking, DL 953 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.9% on time and 0.79% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
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%
- Delta Air Lines 949 on the same route81.5%
- Alaska Airlines 386 on the same route83.8%
- Delta Air Lines 941 on the same route88.9%
- 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
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.