Flight number record
DL 1198
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Santa Ana
- Route
- SLC → SNA
- Departs
- 08:00
- Flights
- 361
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1198, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1198 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1198's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 115 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 361 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 1198 flies
DL 1198 flies SLC to SNA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:00, used on 119 of 361 flights, with 07:55 (81 flights) and 07:45 (78 flights) next.
- Departs 08:00119 flights33.0%
- Departs 07:5581 flights22.4%
- Departs 07:4578 flights21.6%
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 08:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1198 runs 5 points better at 88.8%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 1198 next to SLC to SNA
Every carrier on SLC to SNA combined arrived on time 83.1% of the time across 1,858 flights, so DL 1198 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,606 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1198thin sample | 361 | 88.8% | 44 min | 0.83% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on SLC–SNA | 1,606 | 83.0% | 62 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| All carriers on SLC–SNA | 1,858 | 83.1% | 63 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1198 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1198 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.4% in Jan–Mar 2026, 91.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 85.5% in Jul–Sep 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 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights88.4%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights87.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights85.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1198 ranged from 86.3% on Monday to 92.0% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1198 runs when it is late
DL 1198 often beats the schedule: 123 of 356 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 40 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early123 flights34.6%
- Within 15 min193 flights54.2%
- 15–29 min late17 flights4.8%
- 30–59 min late15 flights4.2%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 356 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 38 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1198
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 January 2026, 2 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 January 2026 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 February 2026 | 2 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 March 2026 | 1 hour 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 February 2026 | 1 hour 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 August 2026 | 1 hour 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1198 runs late
Carrier accounts for 79% of the 1,752 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 79%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 4%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 79%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,376 of the 1,752 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,752 delay minutes reported on DL 1198.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 588 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.
DL 1198 is not only a SLC to SNA flight. It also flew SNA to SLC (348 flights, 92.1% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 361 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SNA to SLCthin sample | 348 | 92.1% | 66 min | 0.86% | A+ |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1198
For a booking, DL 1198 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.8% on time and 0.83% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to SNA, every carrier and departure
- SNA to SLC, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1304 on the same route84.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1277 on the same route81.1%
- Delta Air Lines 1189 on the same route77.5%
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.