Flight number record
DL 1261
Delta Air Lines · Miami to Atlanta
- Route
- MIA → ATL
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1261, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1261 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1261'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
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 1261 flies
DL 1261 flies MIA to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 110 of 365 flights, with 08:15 (62 flights) and 08:05 (55 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00110 flights30.1%
- Departs 08:1562 flights17.0%
- Departs 08:0555 flights15.1%
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 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 1261 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 1261 next to MIA to ATL
Every carrier on MIA to ATL combined arrived on time 74.2% of the time across 6,271 flights, so DL 1261 is 19 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,322 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.8% 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 1261 | 365 | 93.1% | 86 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on MIA–ATL | 3,322 | 77.8% | 82 min | 1.78% | B |
| All carriers on MIA–ATL | 6,271 | 74.2% | 82 min | 1.59% | C |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1261 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1261 held fairly steady: 100.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 90.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 94.4% in Jan–Mar 2026, 93.4% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 91.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights100.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights90.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights94.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.4%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.9%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1261 did best on Friday at 100.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 80.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1261 runs when it is late
DL 1261 often beats the schedule: 114 of 364 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 25 late arrivals split 8 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early114 flights31.3%
- Within 15 min225 flights61.8%
- 15–29 min late8 flights2.2%
- 30–59 min late7 flights1.9%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights1.1%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 364 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
5 of 24 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1261
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 February 2026, 7 hours 36 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 28 February 2026 | 7 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 January 2026 | 4 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 April 2026 | 3 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 23 April 2026 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 August 2026 | 2 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1261 runs late
Carrier accounts for 69% of the 2,138 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 69%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,480 of the 2,138 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,138 delay minutes reported on DL 1261.
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 2.7% 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 594 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 1261 in the data flew MIA to ATL. 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 1261
For a booking, DL 1261 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
- MIA to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to MIA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1510 on the same route83.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1332 on the same route73.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1211 on the same route92.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2836 on the same route87.0%
- Delta Air Lines 1386 on the same route58.1%
- Frontier Airlines 4405 on the same route54.8%
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- 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
- 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.