Flight number record

DL 1186

Delta Air Lines · Tulsa to Atlanta

Route: TUL → ATL
Departs: 16:28
Flights: 275
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1186, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1186 earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 275 flights, with a median arrival 20 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1186's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 270 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 275 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 20 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.

Schedule

When DL 1186 flies

DL 1186 flies TUL to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:28, used on 51 of 275 flights, with 17:16 (37 flights) and 16:20 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:2851 flights18.5%
Departs 17:1637 flights13.5%
Departs 16:2035 flights12.7%

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 16:28 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1186 runs 12 points better at 84.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1186 next to TUL to ATL

Every carrier on TUL to ATL combined arrived on time 88.2% of the time across 1,582 flights, so DL 1186 is 3 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 3 points.

DL 1186 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1186thin sample	275	84.8%	108 min	1.82%	B
All Delta Air Lines on TUL–ATL	1,582	88.2%	116 min	2.34%	A
All carriers on TUL–ATL	1,582	88.2%	116 min	2.34%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1186 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1186 held fairly steady: 80.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 86.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202591 flights80.2%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights88.6%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights86.4%
Apr–Jun 202642 flights85.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1186 did best on Wednesday at 92.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 76.3%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1186 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 4,406 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.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
4%

36% 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 4,406 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 4,406 delay minutes reported on DL 1186.

Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 674 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.

The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including ATL to TUL (237), MSP to RSW (36) and ATL to PHL (31), but none flew often enough under DL 1186 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to TUL to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 275 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 1186

For a booking, read DL 1186 as 84.8% on time with 1.82% cancelled over 275 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