Flight number record
DL 966
Delta Air Lines · Cincinnati to Seattle
- Route
- CVG → SEA
- Departs
- 06:35
- Flights
- 346
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 966, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 966 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 346 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 966's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.58%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 346 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 966 flies
DL 966 flies CVG to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:35, used on 78 of 346 flights, with 06:30 (77 flights) and 06:45 (60 flights) next.
- Departs 06:3578 flights22.5%
- Departs 06:3077 flights22.3%
- Departs 06:4560 flights17.3%
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 06:35 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 966 runs 5 points worse at 84.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 966 next to CVG to SEA
Every carrier on CVG to SEA combined arrived on time 77.0% of the time across 793 flights, so DL 966 is 8 points ahead of it. 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 966thin sample | 346 | 84.6% | 54 min | 0.58% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on CVG–SEAthin sample | 362 | 83.8% | 52 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| All carriers on CVG–SEA | 793 | 77.0% | 55 min | 1.39% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 966 quarter by quarter
DL 966 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 68.2%, a swing of 32 points on roughly 69 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 flights100.0%
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights83.1%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights68.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 966 did best on Saturday at 89.1% on time and worst on Friday at 75.5%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 966 runs when it is late
DL 966 often beats the schedule: 115 of 344 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 53 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early115 flights33.4%
- Within 15 min176 flights51.2%
- 15–29 min late26 flights7.6%
- 30–59 min late15 flights4.4%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 344 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 17 of 344 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 966
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 April 2026, 5 hours 56 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 26 April 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 January 2026 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 March 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 July 2026 | 2 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 966 runs late
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 2,855 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 47%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,350 minutes out of 2,855, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,855 delay minutes reported on DL 966.
Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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 3.5% 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.
At 1,965 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including PBI to LGA (16), but none flew often enough under DL 966 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to CVG to SEA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 346 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 966
For a booking, read DL 966 as 84.6% on time with 0.58% cancelled over 346 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to SEA, every carrier and departure
- SEA to CVG, the return direction
- Alaska Airlines 508 on the same route71.3%
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.