Flight number record
DL 1216
Delta Air Lines · Houston to Los Angeles
- Route
- IAH → LAX
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1216, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1216 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 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 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1216's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 158 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 1216 flies
DL 1216 flies IAH to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 109 of 365 flights, with 07:10 (49 flights) and 06:20 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00109 flights29.9%
- Departs 07:1049 flights13.4%
- Departs 06:2038 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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1216 runs 4 points better at 93.1%. 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 1216 next to IAH to LAX
Every carrier on IAH to LAX combined arrived on time 84.1% of the time across 5,147 flights, so DL 1216 is 9 points ahead of it. Delta flew 648 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1216 | 365 | 93.1% | 55 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on IAH–LAX | 648 | 87.7% | 70 min | 0.93% | A+ |
| All carriers on IAH–LAX | 5,147 | 84.1% | 62 min | 0.45% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1216 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1216 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 95.5% in Jan–Mar 2026, 95.6% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 87.1% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights95.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights87.1%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1216 ranged from 86.3% on Sunday to 96.2% on Monday. 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 1216 runs when it is late
DL 1216 often beats the schedule: 158 of 364 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 15 of the 25 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 5 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early158 flights43.4%
- Within 15 min181 flights49.7%
- 15–29 min late15 flights4.1%
- 30–59 min late5 flights1.4%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.5%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 364 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 22 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 10 still arrived on time. 13 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1216
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 July 2026, 4 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 July 2026 | 4 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 October 2025 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 November 2025 | 3 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 July 2026 | 1 hour 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 January 2026 | 1 hour 38 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 1216 runs late
Carrier accounts for 62% of the 1,375 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 8%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 857 of the 1,375 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,375 delay minutes reported on DL 1216.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.89% 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 1.4% 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 1,379 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 365 flights under DL 1216 in the data flew IAH to LAX. 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. 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.
What to do with this
Booking DL 1216
For a booking, DL 1216 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.1% on time and 0.27% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 2460 on the same route89.0%
- United Airlines 1743 on the same route83.3%
- United Airlines 2600 on the same route91.3%
- United Airlines 469 on the same route89.0%
- Frontier Airlines 1755 on the same route71.9%
- United Airlines 2095 on the same route76.7%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.