Flight number record

DL 1216

Delta Air Lines · Houston to Los Angeles

Route: IAH → LAX
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 17 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1216's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 166 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

94.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

101 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

1.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 171 of 365 flights, with 06:20 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00171 flights46.8%
Departs 06:2038 flights10.4%

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 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 5 points better at 94.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1216 next to IAH to LAX

Every carrier on IAH to LAX combined arrived on time 83.6% of the time across 5,260 flights, so DL 1216 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 645 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 88.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 13 points.

DL 1216 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1216	365	94.2%	101 min	0.55%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on IAH–LAX	645	88.5%	86 min	1.09%	A
All carriers on IAH–LAX	5,260	83.6%	64 min	0.57%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1216 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1216 held fairly steady: 93.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 95.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 95.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights93.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights95.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.6%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1216 ranged from 90.2% on Sunday to 96.2% on Monday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 1216 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 83% of the 2,117 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
83%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 83%, 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 1,750 of the 2,117 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,117 delay minutes reported on DL 1216.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.81% 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 1.9% 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 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. 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.

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: 94.2% on time and 0.55% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

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