Flight number record

DL 1206

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Milwaukee

Route: ATL → MKE
Departs: 18:59
Flights: 320
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1206, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1206 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 320 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

74.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.94%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 320 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 1206 flies

DL 1206 flies ATL to MKE without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:59, used on 46 of 320 flights, with 19:35 (35 flights) and 19:43 (34 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:5946 flights14.4%
Departs 19:3535 flights10.9%
Departs 19:4334 flights10.6%

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 18:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1206 runs 6 points better at 74.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 1206 next to ATL to MKE

Every carrier on ATL to MKE combined arrived on time 83.4% of the time across 2,267 flights, so DL 1206 is 9 points behind it. Delta flew 2,205 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 7 points.

DL 1206 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1206thin sample	320	74.5%	50 min	0.94%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–MKE	2,205	84.2%	51 min	1.81%	B
All carriers on ATL–MKE	2,267	83.4%	51 min	1.76%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1206 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1206 held fairly steady: 73.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 78.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 71.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 72.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights73.9%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights78.9%
Jan–Mar 202666 flights71.9%
Apr–Jun 202671 flights72.1%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1206 did best on Tuesday at 86.4% on time and worst on Friday at 62.2%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1206 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,019 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
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
29%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
8%

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 1,817 of the 4,019 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,019 delay minutes reported on DL 1206.

Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.94%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% 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 669 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 one other city pair in the data, including MKE to ATL (41), but none flew often enough under DL 1206 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to MKE only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 320 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 1206

For a booking, DL 1206 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to MKE: 9 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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