Flight number record

DL 1198

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Santa Ana

Route: SLC → SNA
Departs: 07:55
Flights: 361
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 120 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights

Avg delay

44 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.83%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

1.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 361 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 1198 flies

DL 1198 flies SLC to SNA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:55, used on 143 of 361 flights, with 08:00 (86 flights) and 07:45 (78 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:55143 flights39.6%
Departs 08:0086 flights23.8%
Departs 07:4578 flights21.6%

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 07:55 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1198 runs level with that at 89.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1198 next to SLC to SNA

Every carrier on SLC to SNA combined arrived on time 84.2% of the time across 1,854 flights, so DL 1198 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,655 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 1198 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1198thin sample	361	89.6%	44 min	0.83%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on SLC–SNA	1,655	84.0%	58 min	0.48%	B+
All carriers on SLC–SNA	1,854	84.2%	59 min	0.70%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1198 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1198 held fairly steady: 91.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights91.2%
Oct–Dec 202589 flights88.4%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights87.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.2%

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1198 ranged from 86.0% on Monday to 94.0% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 1198 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 77% of the 1,621 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
77%
National Airspace System
18%
Late-arriving aircraft
4%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,252 of the 1,621 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,621 delay minutes reported on DL 1198.

Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.81% 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 1.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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. 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.

DL 1198 is not only a SLC to SNA flight. It also flew SNA to SLC (348 flights, 91.3% 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.

Other routes flown as DL 1198
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SNA to SLCthin sample	348	91.3%	84 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: 89.6% on time and 0.83% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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