Flight number record
DL 1209
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Portland
- Route
- SLC → PDX
- Departs
- 11:20
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1209, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1209 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1209's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 1209 flies
DL 1209 flies SLC to PDX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:20, used on 95 of 365 flights, with 11:15 (86 flights) and 11:30 (44 flights) next.
- Departs 11:2095 flights26.0%
- Departs 11:1586 flights23.6%
- Departs 11:3044 flights12.1%
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 11:20 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 1209 runs 9 points better at 87.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 1209 next to SLC to PDX
Every carrier on SLC to PDX combined arrived on time 87.9% of the time across 2,384 flights, so DL 1209 is about level with it. Delta flew 1,695 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1209 | 365 | 87.5% | 64 min | 1.37% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on SLC–PDX | 1,695 | 87.9% | 53 min | 1.42% | A |
| All carriers on SLC–PDX | 2,384 | 87.9% | 56 min | 1.13% | A |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1209 quarter by quarter
DL 1209 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 94.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 80.3%, a swing of 14 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 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights90.1%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.4%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights80.3%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1209 did best on Wednesday at 96.1% on time and worst on Monday at 75.5%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1209 runs when it is late
The 45 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early88 flights24.4%
- Within 15 min227 flights63.1%
- 15–29 min late19 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late10 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights2.8%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 47 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1209
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 February 2026, 5 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 February 2026 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 26 September 2025 | 3 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 July 2026 | 2 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 October 2025 | 2 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 November 2025 | 2 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1209 runs late
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 2,863 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,863 delay minutes reported on DL 1209.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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 1209 is not only a SLC to PDX flight. It also flew PDX to SLC (363 flights, 86.3% 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. 365 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDX to SLCthin sample | 363 | 86.3% | 55 min | 1.38% | A |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1209
For a booking, DL 1209 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.5% on time and 1.37% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to PDX, every carrier and departure
- PDX to SLC, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1373 on the same route86.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1244 on the same route87.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1203 on the same route90.5%
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) 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.