Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL1657
Minneapolis (MSP) to Kansas City (MCI) · scheduled 9:45 PM – 11:25 PM
How DL1657 performs
783 operations, June 2024 – July 2026.
DL1657 arrived on time 73.6% of the time, against 82.4% for all MSP → MCI flights, so this departure is 8.8 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 8.6 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 783 operations, June 2024 – July 2026 · If DL1657 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL1657 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL1657 | 73.6% | 2.17% | -6 min | 10.1% | 783 |
| Delta Air Lines on MSP → MCI | 82.2% | 0.82% | -10 min | 6.2% | 3,296 |
| All MSP → MCI flights | 82.4% | 0.97% | -9 min | 6.1% | 4,308 |
DL1657 has cancelled 2.17% of its scheduled departures (17 of 783), against 0.97% for all MSP → MCI flights — this specific departure cancels 1.2 percentage points more often than the route as a whole. Different flight numbers on the same route can carry different aircraft, crews and schedules, so this is a fact about DL1657 specifically, not about the route it flies.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026
Why DL1657 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL1657 on MSP → MCI. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies DL1657 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, DL1657 pushed back an average of 49 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 4 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into MSP just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 716 of 768 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| DL1657 | 23% | 68% | 15% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often DL1657’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often DL1657 left 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves MSP late, does that still matter by the time it reaches MCI?
DL1657 pushes back an average of 21.0 minutes late and reaches the gate at MCI an average of 14.0 minutes late. The 7.0 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 15.7 minutes on the taxiways at MSP, 1.2 minutes shorter than a typical MSP departure in the same hour.
On arrival at MCI, DL1657 spends 6.1 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at MCI spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached MCI. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 20,966 departures from MSP scheduled in the clock hour DL1657 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at MCI (152,684 flights), not just DL1657’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves MSP
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL1657 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 20,966 departures from MSP are scheduled in the 9 PM–10 PM hour over the period, against 369,781 across the whole day.
DL1657 is scheduled out of MSP at 9:45 PM, in the 9 PM–10 PM bank. Departures from MSP in that hour arrive on time 77.8% of the time against 81.1% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 3.4 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from MSP to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes DL1657 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| BOS→DTW Boston to Detroit | July 1, 2023 – June 6, 2024 | 221 | 74.5% |
| JFK→BOS New York to Boston | April 9, 2024 – May 6, 2024 | 28 | — |
| MSP→JFK Minneapolis to New York | March 10, 2024 – April 8, 2024 | 28 | — |
| LAS→ATL Las Vegas to Atlanta | February 11, 2024 – March 9, 2024 | 9 | — |
| DTW→BNA Detroit to Nashville | February 18–24, 2024 | 2 | — |
| SLC→LAX Salt Lake City to Los Angeles | January 12, 2024 – February 12, 2024 | 4 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL1657 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
60 min late
against a median of 6 min early
DL1657 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 6 min early, but the worst tenth are 66 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 783 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 783 records of DL1657 operating MSP → MCI, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
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