Flight number record
DL 1259
Delta Air Lines · Tulsa to Atlanta
- Route
- TUL → ATL
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 349
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1259, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1259 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 2.3 hours. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1259'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 335 completed flights
Avg delay
139 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.44%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 349 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When DL 1259 flies
DL 1259 flies TUL to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 184 of 349 flights, with 05:45 (62 flights) and 05:40 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00184 flights52.7%
- Departs 05:4562 flights17.8%
- Departs 05:4036 flights10.3%
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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1259 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 1259 next to TUL to ATL
Every carrier on TUL to ATL combined arrived on time 87.7% of the time across 1,573 flights, so DL 1259 is 5 points ahead of it. 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 1259thin sample | 349 | 93.1% | 139 min | 3.44% | A− |
| All Delta Air Lines on TUL–ATL | 1,573 | 87.7% | 122 min | 2.42% | A |
| All carriers on TUL–ATL | 1,573 | 87.7% | 122 min | 2.42% | A |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1259 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1259 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 90.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.4% in Jan–Mar 2026, 94.3% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 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 202580 flights90.8%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights91.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights96.7%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1259 did best on Thursday at 100.0% on time and worst on Saturday at 81.8%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1259 runs when it is late
DL 1259 often beats the schedule: 195 of 335 completed flights, 58%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When DL 1259 is late it tends to be very late: 13 of its 23 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 8 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early195 flights58.2%
- Within 15 min117 flights34.9%
- 15–29 min late7 flights2.1%
- 30–59 min late3 flights0.9%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.5%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 335 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
3 of 22 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1259
The latest arrival of the period was on 31 March 2026, 7 hours 35 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 31 March 2026 | 7 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 December 2025 | 7 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 April 2026 | 7 hours 7 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 22 November 2025 | 6 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 February 2026 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1259 runs late
Carrier accounts for 61% of the 3,196 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,196 delay minutes reported on DL 1259.
Cancellations run at 3.44%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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 674 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including LGA to TPA (16) and TPA to LGA (16), but none flew often enough under DL 1259 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to TUL to ATL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 349 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 1259
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 1259: 3.44% of its 349 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about 2.3 hours, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- TUL to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to TUL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2754 on the same route93.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2620 on the same route83.4%
- Delta Air Lines 1186 on the same route83.8%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.