Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL2961
Minneapolis (MSP) to Washington (DCA) · scheduled 8:00 PM – 11:29 PM
How DL2961 performs
774 operations, June 2024 – July 2026.
DL2961 arrived on time 71.7% of the time, against 77.2% for all MSP → DCA flights, so this departure is 5.5 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 7.6 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 774 operations, June 2024 – July 2026 · If DL2961 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL2961 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL2961 | 71.7% | 2.33% | -5 min | 9.6% | 774 |
| Delta Air Lines on MSP → DCA | 79.3% | 1.26% | -8 min | 6.5% | 5,314 |
| All MSP → DCA flights | 77.2% | 2.32% | -8 min | 7.8% | 7,487 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026
Why DL2961 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL2961 on MSP → DCA. 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 DL2961 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying DL2961 came in 15 or more minutes late on 18% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into MSP just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 586 of 756 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 |
|---|---|
| DL2961 | 18% |
| Network, same turn | 23% |
The schedule leaves a long gap on the ground, which gives a late aircraft room to catch up before this flight pushes back.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 90 minutes to 3 hours. How often DL2961’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
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 DCA?
DL2961 pushes back an average of 12.3 minutes late and reaches the gate at DCA an average of 7.6 minutes late. The 4.7 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. Its 19.1 minutes on the taxiways at MSP is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.
On arrival at DCA, DL2961 spends 7.5 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 DCA 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 DCA. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 24,926 departures from MSP scheduled in the clock hour DL2961 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DCA (435,126 flights), not just DL2961’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. DL2961 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 24,926 departures from MSP are scheduled in the 8 PM–9 PM hour over the period, against 369,781 across the whole day.
DL2961 is scheduled out of MSP at 8:00 PM, in the 8 PM–9 PM bank. Departures from MSP in that hour arrive on time 78.5% of the time against 81.1% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour DL2961 leaves in is an ordinary one for MSP and explains nothing about its record either way.
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 DL2961 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATL→XNA Atlanta to Fayetteville/Springdale/Rogers | June 8–15, 2024 | 2 | — |
| ATL→MSN Atlanta to Madison | September 5, 2023 – June 6, 2024 | 90 | 88.9% |
| MSN→ATL Madison to Atlanta | December 17, 2023 – June 6, 2024 | 40 | — |
| TPA→ATL Tampa to Atlanta | April 9, 2024 – May 6, 2024 | 24 | — |
| ATL→LEX Atlanta to Lexington | February 6, 2024 – March 9, 2024 | 33 | — |
| LEX→ATL Lexington to Atlanta | February 6, 2024 – March 9, 2024 | 33 | — |
| EWR→ATL Newark to Atlanta | November 29, 2023 – December 6, 2023 | 2 | — |
| PHL→MSP Philadelphia to Minneapolis | November 5, 2023 – December 4, 2023 | 25 | — |
| IAH→ATL Houston to Atlanta | November 24, 2023 | 1 | — |
| LGA→ORD New York to Chicago | July 2, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 51 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL2961 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.
57 min late
against a median of 5 min early
DL2961 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 5 min early, but the worst tenth are 62 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 774 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL2983 | Delta Air Lines | 85.6% | 9 min early | 762 |
| DL2958 | Delta Air Lines | 85.1% | 11 min early | 768 |
| DL2963 | Delta Air Lines | 76.0% | 5 min early | 776 |
| DL2961 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 71.7% | 5 min early | 774 |
| DL2962 | Delta Air Lines | 61.6% | 4 min late | 606 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL2961 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 774 records of DL2961 operating MSP → DCA, 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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