Flight number record

DL 1018

Delta Air Lines · Fort Lauderdale to Raleigh

Route: FLL → RDU
Departs: 15:20
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1018, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1018 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

On time

74.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights

Avg delay

104 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

11.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 1018 flies

DL 1018 flies FLL to RDU without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:20, used on 115 of 364 flights, with 15:14 (48 flights) and 14:59 (46 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:20115 flights31.6%
Departs 15:1448 flights13.2%
Departs 14:5946 flights12.6%

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 15:20 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1018 runs 2 points better at 74.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1018 next to FLL to RDU

Every carrier on FLL to RDU combined arrived on time 68.3% of the time across 1,318 flights, so DL 1018 is 6 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 7 points.

DL 1018 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1018thin sample	364	74.4%	104 min	1.10%	C
All Delta Air Lines on FLL–RDUthin sample	364	74.4%	104 min	1.10%	C
All carriers on FLL–RDU	1,318	68.3%	73 min	1.90%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1018 quarter by quarter

DL 1018 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 69.7%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 91 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 flights71.9%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights80.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights69.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights75.6%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1018 did best on Wednesday at 84.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 52.9%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1018 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 9,560 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
4%

50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 9,560 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 9,560 delay minutes reported on DL 1018.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 680 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 364 flights under DL 1018 in the data flew FLL to RDU. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 1018

For a booking, read DL 1018 as 74.4% on time with 1.10% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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