Flight number record

DL 1246

Delta Air Lines · Milwaukee to Atlanta

Route: MKE → ATL
Departs: 15:14
Flights: 282
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1246, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1246 earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 282 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1246's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 276 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.06%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 282 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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 1246 flies

DL 1246 flies MKE to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:14, used on 35 of 282 flights, with 14:04 (34 flights) and 14:54 (33 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:1435 flights12.4%
Departs 14:0434 flights12.1%
Departs 14:5433 flights11.7%

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 15:14 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1246 runs 14 points better at 85.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1246 next to MKE to ATL

Every carrier on MKE to ATL combined arrived on time 89.4% of the time across 2,267 flights, so DL 1246 is 4 points behind it. Delta flew 2,205 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 90.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

DL 1246 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1246thin sample	282	85.9%	53 min	1.06%	A
All Delta Air Lines on MKE–ATL	2,205	90.0%	96 min	1.90%	A
All carriers on MKE–ATL	2,267	89.4%	92 min	1.90%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1246 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1246 held fairly steady: 88.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.3% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 85.9% 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 202590 flights88.5%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights81.3%
Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
Apr–Jun 202672 flights85.9%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1246 did best on Tuesday at 97.6% on time and worst on Friday at 76.9%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1246 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,058 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
28%
Carrier
28%
Extreme weather
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,058 delay minutes reported on DL 1246.

Cancellations sit at 1.06% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.06%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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.

DL 1246 is not only a MKE to ATL flight. It also flew ATL to MKE (282 flights, 87.8% 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. 282 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.

Other routes flown as DL 1246
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
ATL to MKEthin sample	282	87.8%	37 min	1.06%	A

What to do with this

Booking DL 1246

For a booking, DL 1246 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.9% on time and 1.06% 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