Flight number record
DL 1203
Delta Air Lines · Portland to Salt Lake City
- Route
- PDX → SLC
- Departs
- 09:45
- Flights
- 251
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1203, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1203 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 251 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1203's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 140 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 242 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.19%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 251 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 1203 flies
DL 1203 flies PDX to SLC without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:45, used on 79 of 251 flights, with 10:00 (37 flights) and 09:50 (31 flights) next.
- Departs 09:4579 flights31.5%
- Departs 10:0037 flights14.7%
- Departs 09:5031 flights12.4%
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 09:45 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1203 runs 7 points better at 91.3%. 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 1203 next to PDX to SLC
Every carrier on PDX to SLC combined arrived on time 89.1% of the time across 2,383 flights, so DL 1203 is 2 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,696 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 90.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1203thin sample | 251 | 91.3% | 56 min | 3.19% | A− |
| All Delta Air Lines on PDX–SLC | 1,696 | 90.8% | 61 min | 1.47% | A |
| All carriers on PDX–SLC | 2,383 | 89.1% | 64 min | 1.09% | A |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1203 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1203 held fairly steady: 90.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 89.8% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 94.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Oct–Dec 20259 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights90.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights94.9%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1203 did best on Monday at 97.3% on time and worst on Saturday at 85.3%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1203 runs when it is late
DL 1203 often beats the schedule: 72 of 242 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 21 late arrivals split 7 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early72 flights29.8%
- Within 15 min149 flights61.6%
- 15–29 min late7 flights2.9%
- 30–59 min late7 flights2.9%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late3 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 242 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
5 of 25 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. Only 1 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1203
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 May 2026, 3 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 May 2026 | 3 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 January 2026 | 2 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 April 2026 | 2 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 June 2026 | 1 hour 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 March 2026 | 1 hour 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 1203 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 78% of the 1,170 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 78%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 3%National Airspace System
78% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,170 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 78 to one. The split is drawn from 1,170 delay minutes reported on DL 1203.
Cancellations run at 3.19%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% 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 630 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 1203 is not only a PDX to SLC flight. It also flew SLC to PDX (251 flights, 90.5% 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. 251 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SLC to PDXthin sample | 251 | 90.5% | 56 min | 3.19% | A− |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1203
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 1203: 3.19% of its 251 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to SLC, every carrier and departure
- SLC to PDX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1270 on the same route97.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1209 on the same route86.3%
- Delta Air Lines 1244 on the same route88.0%
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.