Flight number record

DL 1038

Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Fort Lauderdale

Route: RDU → FLL
Departs: 12:13
Flights: 364
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1038, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1038 lands a B+, 4 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 about an hour on average. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

On time

80.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

6.1%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.

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Schedule

When DL 1038 flies

DL 1038 flies RDU to FLL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:13, used on 58 of 364 flights.

Departs 12:1358 flights15.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 12:13 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 1038 runs 3 points better at 80.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

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Against the route

DL 1038 next to RDU to FLL

Every carrier on RDU to FLL combined arrived on time 77.2% of the time across 1,402 flights, so DL 1038 is 4 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 1038 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1038thin sample	364	80.8%	67 min	0.55%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on RDU–FLLthin sample	364	80.8%	67 min	0.55%	B+
All carriers on RDU–FLL	1,402	77.2%	73 min	2.28%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 1038 quarter by quarter

DL 1038 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 86.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 74.2%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 73 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 202530 flights76.7%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights86.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights74.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights82.0%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights82.0%

Scale runs 65% to 90%.

By weekday, DL 1038 did best on Thursday at 88.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 65.4%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 1038 runs when it is late

DL 1038 often beats the schedule: 98 of 360 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 69 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.

15+ min early98 flights27.2%
Within 15 min193 flights53.6%
15–29 min late26 flights7.2%
30–59 min late21 flights5.8%
1–2 hours late12 flights3.3%
2+ hours late10 flights2.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

12 of 58 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. In the other direction, 23 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FLL.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 1038

The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 9 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across March, January, July and August, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of DL 1038 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
16 March 2026	9 hours 16 minutes	Extreme weather
7 March 2026	6 hours 5 minutes	National Airspace System
3 January 2026	4 hours 24 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
30 July 2026	2 hours 50 minutes	National Airspace System
11 August 2026	2 hours 50 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 1038 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,630 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
37%
Carrier
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
Extreme weather
8%

37% 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 1,706 minutes out of 4,630, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,630 delay minutes reported on DL 1038.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.89% 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

6.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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.

Every one of the 364 flights under DL 1038 in the data flew RDU to FLL. 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 1038

For a booking, read DL 1038 as 80.8% on time with 0.55% 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures