Flight number record
DL 1204
Delta Air Lines · Kansas City to Atlanta
- Route
- MCI → ATL
- Departs
- 05:50
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1204, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1204 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1204's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 165 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.65%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 1204 flies
DL 1204 flies MCI to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:50, used on 79 of 364 flights, with 05:39 (58 flights) and 05:43 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 05:5079 flights21.7%
- Departs 05:3958 flights15.9%
- Departs 05:4338 flights10.4%
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 05:50 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1204 runs 5 points better at 93.8%. 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 1204 next to MCI to ATL
Every carrier on MCI to ATL combined arrived on time 86.4% of the time across 3,246 flights, so DL 1204 is 7 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,708 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 89.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1204thin sample | 364 | 93.8% | 63 min | 1.65% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on MCI–ATL | 2,708 | 89.4% | 74 min | 1.48% | A |
| All carriers on MCI–ATL | 3,246 | 86.4% | 72 min | 1.32% | A |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1204 quarter by quarter
DL 1204 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 89.7%, a swing of 10 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 flights100.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights93.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights89.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.6%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights94.9%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1204 ranged from 87.8% on Sunday to 98.0% on Saturday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1204 runs when it is late
DL 1204 often beats the schedule: 154 of 356 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 15 of the 22 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 4 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early154 flights43.3%
- Within 15 min180 flights50.6%
- 15–29 min late15 flights4.2%
- 30–59 min late3 flights0.8%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.6%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 356 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 11 of 356 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1204
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 August 2026, 6 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across August, December, April, March and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 August 2026 | 6 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 December 2025 | 6 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 April 2026 | 1 hour 36 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 24 March 2026 | 1 hour 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 January 2026 | 34 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 1204 runs late
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 1,385 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 592 of the 1,385 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,385 delay minutes reported on DL 1204.
Cancellations sit at 1.65% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.1% 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 692 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 1204 in the data flew MCI to ATL. 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 1204
For a booking, read DL 1204 as 93.8% on time with 1.65% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- MCI to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to MCI, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1660 on the same route84.8%
- Delta Air Lines 3110 on the same route88.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2908 on the same route90.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2471 on the same route93.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1212 on the same route93.9%
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.