Flight number record

DL 966

Delta Air Lines · Cincinnati to Seattle

Route: CVG → SEA
Departs: 06:30
Flights: 346
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 966, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 966 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 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 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 346 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 966 flies

DL 966 flies CVG to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:30, used on 77 of 346 flights, with 07:01 (66 flights) and 06:45 (60 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:3077 flights22.3%
Departs 07:0166 flights19.1%
Departs 06:4560 flights17.3%

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 06:30 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 4 points worse at 85.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 966 next to CVG to SEA

Every carrier on CVG to SEA combined arrived on time 74.4% of the time across 793 flights, so DL 966 is 11 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

DL 966 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 966thin sample	346	85.5%	52 min	0.29%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on CVG–SEAthin sample	362	84.7%	50 min	0.55%	B+
All carriers on CVG–SEA	793	74.4%	53 min	1.13%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 96.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 68.2%, a swing of 29 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 flights96.7%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights83.1%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights68.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.3%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 966 ranged from 79.6% on Friday to 90.2% on Tuesday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 966 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 2,579 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.

National Airspace System
52%
Carrier
46%
Extreme weather
2%

52% 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 1,345 minutes out of 2,579, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,579 delay minutes reported on DL 966.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, below the national 1.81% 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 3.2% 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.

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, DL 966 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.5% on time and 0.29% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures