Carrier route record
DLDCA→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Washington to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,701
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DCA to MSP lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About 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 1,701 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on DCA to MSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,667 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on DCA to MSP, 2,632 flights
These figures cover 1,701 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DCA to MSP
Delta flew 1,701 of the 2,632 flights on DCA to MSP, most of the route. Its 78.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.9% to PSA at 65.4%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,701 | 78.9% | 94 min | 1.88% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 164 | 76.9% | 55 min | 2.44% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 72.5% | 62 min | 2.44% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 198 | 72.2% | 76 min | 5.05% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 528 | 65.4% | 96 min | 7.20% | C− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DCA to MSP
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am623 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am22 flights—
- 11am–2pm369 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm331 flights74.5%
- 5pm–8pm356 flights73.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.5% of the time, against 73.8% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 623 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DCA to MSP through the year
July is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 33 points below October, the best at 91.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.1%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DCA to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on DCA to MSP often beats the schedule: 503 of 1,667 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 351 late arrivals split 97 under half an hour, 109 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 145 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early503 flights30.2%
- Within 15 min813 flights48.8%
- 15–29 min late97 flights5.8%
- 30–59 min late109 flights6.5%
- 1–2 hours late77 flights4.6%
- 2+ hours late68 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,667 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
51 of 330 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 72 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DCA to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 September 2025, 18 hours 34 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 11 September 2025 | 18 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 July 2026 | 15 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 14 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 August 2026 | 14 hours 23 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 12 March 2026 | 14 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 33,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 17,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 32,916 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.88% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.7% 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 931 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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.9% on time across 1,701 flights, 3 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,701 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on DCA to MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 91.6% on time and July 58.2%, a swing of 33 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,667 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to DCA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DCA to MSP76.9%
- Republic Airways on DCA to MSP72.2%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to MSP65.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.